


I'm Just a Man, I'm Not a Hero

by hebetude, yusukewritesangst



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: BAMF Shinsou Hitoshi, BAMF Skull (Reborn), Bad Jokes, Bad Puns, Biased Author, Character Death, Child Abuse, Circus Fun, Don't Like Don't Read, Graphic Descriptions of Torture, Gratuitous Death, HAPPY APRIL FOOLS ALL, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kind of a Mental Breakdown, M/M, Oops, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Shinsou Hitoshi is Skull, Temporary Character Death, Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, again... sorry reborn lovers, but he's way way way way down at the bottom of my liked list, cat vs dog debate, coffee deserves to be worshipped like the holy grail of caffeine it is, don't be offended by hitoshi liking cats rather than dogs, er - Freeform, he'll get better...... eventually, hitoshi doesn't really like acting stupid but he has to, hitoshi has bad nightmares, hitoshi has become desensitized to dying over and over again, hitoshi has some catharsis, hitoshi likes cats, hitoshi may or may not be traumatized as of now, i almost had a serious ending there but i messed it up and put comedy after all the angst, i hope thats how the sentence goes, i kinda don't like reborn even tho most of it is played for comedy, i was wondering when that would happen, i'll be adding tags as the story goes on, i'll still read things with reborn and write things with reborn, jeez this is an emotional rollercoast, like describing flesh, mostly at least, much pain, oh god maya has rubbed off on hitoshi, oh hey hitoshi finally figures out hes in a diff universe, reborn is a bit of a jerk, rollercoastER not rollercoast wtf brain, so sorry skull/reborn shippers, strap in and get ready for a wild ride, that ship won't fly in this fic at all, the boi will be healing later im sure of it, this is in his pov so obv cats are gonna be portrayed in a better light than dogs, time to cry yall
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-05-02 19:16:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14551563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hebetude/pseuds/hebetude, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yusukewritesangst/pseuds/yusukewritesangst
Summary: Where Hitoshi has dreamed of being an undercover hero in the depths of the darkest shadows and the fire that explodes in his face is not entirely unwelcome because it'shome. At least, until he finds out about the mafia and pulls a Yagi-sensei and starts spewing out blood."Fuck," Hitoshi decided. "Fuck."





	1. Anemone;  fading hope and a feeling of having been forsaken

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first work! Yay. I'll be adding more tags as the work progresses chapter by chapter, and I may or may not go back and change the chapter titles back from the boring 'chapter 1' to something more interesting. Keep an eye on the notes, as I'll tell you when I change something!
> 
> Almost forgot! Disclaimer: I don't own KHR or BNHA, nor the characters in those fandoms. All I own is this fic and the few OCs that are going to appear shortly.

Blood. There was blood everyone. Spilled onto the floor, splattered onto the walls, and stained into his clothes, HItoshi was fairly certain that there was even blood on his underwear. Which would be an awkward thought on a normal day in a normal situation, but now was not that day nor time. He wondered how much blood could a human body possibly have for a moment, but he snapped to attention when the villain stepped away from Midoriya–– _“Call me Izuku, Hitoshi! We’re close enough friends by now.”_ ––and towards him.

Hitoshi took a calming breath and rooted himself to where he stood. He would not run away from this monster, the villain who took down the strongest of his friends–– _Bakugou’s hands were charcoal, Todoroki looked like a cherry popsicle half-eaten, Uraraka’s fingers were all broken and her arm was half torn off, Asui’s tongue was ripped apart on the ground, Kirishima looked like he got thrown into a blender and chunks of his flesh were on the floor around him, Tokoyami was pinned to the wall with knives, every detail was stuck in his mind he needed help **he wanted to forget**_ ––without even using her quirk. He pinched himself and gulped his speeding breath down, shoving all his doubts of if he could even be of any use to stop her if his friends couldn’t so what could he possibly do if they––“Are you going to talk now?”

The villain just smiled prettily at him as if they both weren’t covered in blood, her having more on her despite Hitoshi being the one who lost more of the two of them. Honestly, they could both fill a few buckets full with the red liquid they were drenched in if they had time, which is probably bad because someone shouldn’t lose that much blood and how were his friends going to be okay if they lost that much no wonder they all collapsed _holy shit did he even check if they were breathing before taking on this villain **are they still alive**_ ––

Hitoshi bit his tongue sharply to fight off the panic attack that was rapidly approaching. His head started to get fuzzy as he calmed his breathing, and he felt as if he was a million miles away. “I guess you’re not completely stupid,” he said, his voice a faint echo even to his own ears, “but you’re still stupid enough to not realize that our teachers will be here soon, and be rather furious with you for causing this situation too.”

As the villain strolled carelessly closer, he saw rather than felt his own body step away. He heard his footsteps as he circled around her, but his feet were devoid of all feeling. He was barely seeing out of his own eyes, it was as if he was in another person’s body. Was this her quirk? Was he even in control of himself? He felt calm, too calm for this situation, as if he was removed––he was probably disassociating. Which was bad, but this whole situation was bad to begin with, so what’s one more thing going to do?

The villain lunged at Hitoshi suddenly, and he ducked into a roll towards her, ending with them just swapping positions. Her smile tensed slightly, the only indication of what she was truly feeling. Hitoshi’s mind wandered as his body reacted to whatever she threw at him thanks to the insane training he underwent with his friends. When were the teachers going to get here? Heck, when was any pro hero going to arrive? He’d even take a vigilante at this point, or another villain to distract the other with. But the teachers were called and alerted over half an hour ago. They weren’t that far from the school––Hitoshi froze.

Did the teachers run into trouble? What if this villain has an accomplice? Was this the League of Villains all over again? All Might–– _“Just call me Yagi, since I’m no longer All Might after this.”_ ––didn’t have his power anymore, Midoriya–– _“Izuku!” Midoriya insisted_ ––had inherited it and was doing amazing with taming the power. He didn’t want to worry about the teachers because that would imply that he didn’t trust his power, but Hitoshi couldn’t help himself. He worried. He worried about All Might–– _“I’ve told you before, it’s Yagi now.”_ ––about Aizawa–– _“I suppose this makes me your sensei now.”_ ––about Suzuki–– _“Even though I’m not your sensei anymore, you can still come to me for help with any of your problems!”_ ––and every single teacher at U.A. He couldn’t not worry, they’ve all been through too much together to not and why were they taking so long to––

A hand wrapped around his throat, deceivingly gentle. Hitoshi blinked as he came back to reality, staring up at the pasty white ceiling. He was glad there was at least no blood on the ceiling. It would drip on them and that would just be too gross to deal with; he ignored the fact that he was already taking a bath in the stuff. The hand around his throat tightened sharply and he bounced back to reality for the billionth time that day. Today really wasn’t his day. He vaguely registered a voice speaking in the room, but his head was full of cotton and his ears felt like they were going to pop and his eyes couldn’t register the ceiling in front of him anymore. So he just tried to breath. But he couldn’t.

Hitoshi’s air supply was cut off, presumably by the hand. Whose hand was it again? Was it the villain’s, or one of her allies? Or was the reason the heroes were taking so long to arrive was that they weren’t on his side after all, were they all traitors? Through the fuzziness that was his brain, he thought that maybe this was the villain’s quirk. Was she causing all of this? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’ll never know, and he’ll die here. Weren’t his friends dead? He could see them again, that’d be nice.

Suddenly, Hitoshi’s air pathway opened up, and air rushed down to his lungs. His eyes watered as he rolled onto his side and coughed. A hand rubbed his back and talked to him softly as fighting and screaming occurred a short distance from them. His vision swam and the next time he focused and grounded himself, there was an awful taste in his mouth, and a puddle of vomit on the floor. Well, there went his lunch. Strawberry crepes and whipped cream just doesn’t taste the same way when you reverse-eat it: a more pleasant way to say that he threw it up.

A napkin is placed in front of his mouth, and Hitoshi took it and wiped the vomit off of his face quickly, throwing the napkin onto the floor in front of him when he finished. He swallowed a few times to get rid of the horrible taste in his mouth and looks up. “Suzuki-sensei?”

Suzuki was his sensei when he was still in Gen Ed. She’s a tall, lanky woman with green hair and green eyes. Much like Midoriya, now that Hitoshi thought about it in the weird, floating sensation his brain is undergoing. She wasn’t wearing her normal red glasses, so she must be wearing contacts at the moment. Helpful, seeing as there was a villain here… 

Hitoshi blinked when Suzuki took off her long, dark grey-blue cloak and wrapped it around his shoulders. “You’re probably in shock right now,” she told him. “But we don’t have a shock blanket on us. Nor do we have the time to use it.”

Hitoshi stood up the instant his previous sensei backed up enough for him to do so. “I can still fight,” he said immediately. Suzuki just shook her head and pushed him towards the hole in the wall. He interrupted her before she could even start speaking. “What the fuck? Why did you make a huge hole in the wall when there’s a perfectly fine door to use?”

The sound of fighting abruptly stopped, and Hitoshi looked over. Aizawa, Kayama, and Yamada were fighting the villain all at the same time to no apparent success. They were all staring at him, until the villain burst out into high-pitched, hyena-like cackles. She fell onto the floor and started rolling around in the blood, but quickly dodged the instant Aizawa tried to catch her in his capture weapon.

“Aw,” she snickered and she skipped over to Hitoshi, dodging any and all attacks from the pro heroes on the way there. She kicked Suzuki out of the way and grabbed Hitoshi’s hand, pulling him to her chest and hugging him from behind, putting him between her and the pro heroes. “I really do like you. You’re funny.”

“I’m sure I’m hilarious,” Hitoshi responded absentmindedly, his brain running faster than it ever has, almost outpacing an airplane. How could he get her to respond?

“Comedy levels, really––” she froze as Hitoshi snatched onto the fleeting connection given to him by her response. He mentally wrapped the leash around his hand about five times to reinforce the connection and sighed in relief when her mental struggling was all for naught. She didn’t have much of a leash to pull on in the first place; for all her physical strength, she was pathetic mentally. It was almost too easy.

“Let go of me,” Hitoshi told her. The arms pressing against him dropped immediately. “Go to Ai––Eraserhead, Present Mic, and Midnight, and follow all of their orders until you get to the police station.”

He collapsed onto the floor in a sitting position as she did so. He felt hysterical, all he wanted to do was curl up into a ball with a cat and sleep for five years. Suzuki was heading over to help him up when he felt a sudden lack of tugging on the leash. He jerked up, causing everyone to look over at him again. Looking over to the villain, he noticed that she had stopped walking. The leash pulled away from him one last time in a shocking burst of strength, then lunged at him.

Hitoshi’s world went a confusing combination of everything and nothing as he fell through the void. A nothingness that his brain wasn’t able to comprehend mixed with an everything that was too much and filled too much space, leaving too little for him. He felt like he was being pulled apart and put back together simultaneously. The hands reaching for him were too late, and sounds of fighting, and screaming, and too much noise for him to bear erupted from above––below––around––next to––near––far away––nowhere––everywhere as he closed his eyes.

Hitoshi wondered about a lot of things as he fell for a very long time. He wondered if he would ever see his family again, or his new family at U.A. Would they eventually forget about him and move on? Or will they mourn for him and the friends he lost against the faker villain, the one who faked being under his control? Will they hate him and curse his name because he could not save the others, the ones who were much better than him, their favorites? His name would be a curse from everyone’s lips–– _“Goddammit, why can’t you do anything right!”_ ––spat out like poison–– _“We provided for you, the least you could do in return is to extend the same courtesy towards us!”_ ––a warning for the younger generations to come–– _“God, why can’t you be like the other children? Be normal for once in your life!”_ ––a cautionary story to scare little children into being good and eating their vegetables–– _“General Education? General! Education! You bitch, we told you to get into Heroics or to give up!”_ ––the new Boogie Man hiding under the bed–– _“My worthless son is worth more dead than alive at this point.”_ ––just an urban legend doomed to be mocked and belittled, and eventually forgotten.

At last he fell, in a flash of purple light and warmth, into a trash bin. Now all those jokes about him being trash are true, but Hitoshi couldn’t ponder over that for too long because the pain finally registered and his brain blacked out.


	2. Gladiolus; strength of character, faithfulness, honor, and remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi is a thousand percent sure that he's gonna die if this lady does not stop chucking knives at him. Now if only he could get a gosh darn phone to call his friends with...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! I wrote about a fourth of this yesterday, and the rest I wrote today in a post-AP test panic. That was fun... it's a bit shorter than I would've liked it to be, but I did say that I would have it up today, and I didn't want to rush the rest of it. So, here it is! I hope y'all like it.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own KHR or BNHA! I wish...

Hitoshi groaned as the smell of rotting eggs flooded his conscious as soon as he woke up. He laid there for a few seconds to try and fight off the pounding headache that felt like it was trying to kill him. At least it wasn’t a migraine, thank whatever God is out there for minor courtesies. He didn’t want to get up and face the horrible condition he was in, and he didn’t even know where that villain had teleported him to. Alas, he eventually had to move, but he wasn’t prepared for the sensations his body bombarded him with when he finally mustered the strength to get up.

His stomach was trying to claw its way up his throat, his bones were creaking, his ears ringing, and there was a foreign presence in his body and it was too warm, _too warm_ , he needed it out, he was coughing and coughing and he couldn’t breath, _he had fire in him_ ––

Hitoshi’s body collapsed again as his brain decided, with the upcoming of a migraine on top of all these symptoms and pain, that his body needed to shut down and recuperate.

The next time he woke up, he was still in the dumpster. However, he didn’t feel completely like crap as he rolled out of the trash and onto the cold cement floor. Looking around, Hitoshi realized he was in an alleyway. Pushing back the throbbing in his skull from the previous migraine, he pushed through the pain to exit into the street.

Bright light partially blinded Hitoshi, causing him to have to close his eyes for a moment. How dark was that alley for normal sunlight to have this effect on him? He opened his eyes, blinking the moisture away from them so he could finally see. Once his vision was clear, he looked around the street and froze.

The street was empty. It was broad daylight, a little past noon, and there were food stands everywhere. The smell of baked bread wafted down from a few stands away, and Hitoshi’s stomach made its hunger known very loudly. Was this a ghost town or something? All of the food seemed fresh as Hitoshi walked from cart to cart, not daring to take any in case this was a trick. It could be someone’s quirk, most likely one of the villains.

Eventually, Hitoshi heard faint laughter coming from his left. He took the next turn he could and stared at the huge circus tent in the courtyard a few blocks down. Is that where everyone went? They just… abandoned their jobs to go watch the circus? Hitoshi regretted not taking the corn bread when he could. Instead, he just snatched a few churros from the cart next to him and munched on them as he walked towards the circus. If people abandoned their jobs without even locking up or putting anything away to watch a circus of all things, then they deserve to be stolen from. He’d just have to hide that from his senseis.

Just as Hitoshi was about to peek into the tent, a man popped out from the entrance. “Where’s your ticket?” he asked in English. Hitoshi was glad that he learned so many languages thanks to his quirk, so he adjusted quickly. “You’re a bit late, but they only started a short while ago.”

Shit. Hitoshi didn’t have a ticket. Well, he did have a license, and this could be considered hero work as he was trying to find a way home, so… “Give me a moment.”

“Sure, take your––” Hitoshi snatched onto the leash and pulled. He didn’t waste any time wrapping it around his hand, because this was a civilian, and he didn’t have any mental strength.

“Let me in, and if anyone asks, I have a ticket,” Hitoshi commanded. He almost let go of the leash when he felt the order settle into the man's brain, but he continued to add on another command, “and you’ll just remember me politely handing you my ticket and you letting me enter.” Hitoshi finally let go of the leash and the man returned back to normal, blinking and looking slightly dazed.

“Alright…” the man mumbled for a moment, before clearing his throat. “Everything looks to be in order, go on ahead and take a seat.”

As Hitoshi made his way inside, he realized just how packed the huge tent was. Every seat was taken, and there were even people sitting in the aisles, standing to the side, and even all the way in the back. There was almost no room for him, but he managed to squeeze a spot in the back standing. A lot of people shushed him in the process, but at least he could see everything.

Originally, Hitoshi’s plan was to find someone and ask to use their phone so he could call the school, but that went out the window when he realized how many people would be very irritated at him if he were to interrupt the circus. So he stayed quiet and watched the acts. The current one was fire eating, which in Hitoshi’s opinion was not very impressive given many people could do that with their quirks. But the audience liked it, so he kept his mouth shut.

As the acts proceeded, Hitoshi wondered why none of them employed the use of a quirk. Sure, it was illegal unless you had a licence, but it’s not like anyone followed that law. It was just generally accepted that nobody would fault you for using it unless your quirk was shunned and feared, like Hitoshi’s quirk was. Not anymore though, as he was now almost a hero, in his last year of U.A., already with a licence.

Hitoshi dozed off for a moment, gazing into the distance as the circus went on and on with the same boring acts. The cheering and talking of the crew on stage became like background noise to him as he sighed.

However, he jarred back to awareness when everyone raised their hand, screaming things from “Pick me! Pick me!” to “I love you all!”. The woman on staged hummed to herself before pointing in Hitoshi’s general vicinity.

“You there!” she called out. Everyone went dead silent to hear who she had picked for whatever inane reason Hitoshi had missed. “You, guy with the purple hair and purple eyes! Asian looking! Uh, wearing a grey hoodie! Get up here!”

The audience rustled around, looking for whoever looked like that. Hitoshi was confused. That sounded like him, but what did he miss? Why did she want him to go up on stage? Was he going to help with one of the acts? It sounded like something a performer would do, calling on the audience to participate in the performance.

A person nudged Hitoshi up to the front, and soon everyone else was pushing him up to the stage as well. Apparently they found out who she was talking about, and decided to give him no choice whether he wanted to participate or not. People kept shoving him forwards until he finally reached the stage and gave in, stepping up the steps.

“So, what’s your name?” the woman said, and Hitoshi only now noticed the tiny mic strapped to her cheek. She quickly taped one onto his cheek before he could reply, and he winced slightly as her hand made contact, but willed himself not to step away.

“Shinsou Hitoshi,” he replied. “Or Hitoshi Shinsou, as you would say it here.”

“Ooh, nice,” the woman chirped. “We got a wide audience here this time! So, asian? Japanese, Chinese…?” she trailed off, indicating for him to pick up the slack and answer the question.

“Japanese.” Hitoshi didn’t know why all show hosts did this. Although this wasn’t a show on TV, it was in real time. What was the point of asking all these questions when you were never going to meet that person again?

“Well, uh, Hitoshi,” the woman faced the audience and took out a huge knife. “What do you say about helping me out with my act, knife throwing?”

Hitoshi took a very large step to the side, away from the crazy lady holding a knife. He didn’t care if anyone here had a healing quirk, he did not want to be impaled with a knife, not today! All he wanted to do was go home and have a very long cry over what happened today. Yesterday. Whatever. “First of all, I’d like to say it was _knife_ meeting you, but are you sure your skills are _sharp_ enough to not stab me with your pokey sticks?”

There was a long beat of silence before the woman burst out into laughter, the audience soon following. “Ah, this kid is a gem! I’ve never had someone spew puns up on stage relating to the acts before!”

“Yeah, well, I live to serve,” Hitoshi responded, still eyeing the crazy lady carefully. He did not want to become a dart board, he was a hero! It was a part blessing that people didn’t recognize him, though also a part curse. He was probably in America, the people here are crazy, and they have their own large community of heroes, so they were less likely to recognize Japanese heroes such as him.

“Are you sure there isn’t anyone else more willing out in the audience to get _holed_ up?” Hitoshi asked, ignoring the laughter at yet another pun, hoping someone would take pity on him and let him walk free. He was young, dammit, and still had his whole life to look forward to! Plus, his friends––mostly Bakugou, though he wouldn’t really call the explosive teen his friend, more of a mutually tolerated almost enemy––would mock him if he got murdered not by a villain, but by a dagger throwing act gone wrong at the circus.

“Nah,” the woman finally stopped laughing, her grin a bit too wide to be natural. “I think they’re all ecstatic that you’re up here! You’re a natural performer, hun, don’t get stage fright!”

It wasn’t stage fright if it was a legitimate fear of death. As the crazy knife chick walked closer to him, Hitoshi felt tempted to back away, but he resisted the urge. If he ran away from a knife happy civilian, how could he stay put and fight a villain? What kind of hero would he be?

“If you’ll just walk over to the board on the left side of the stage, that’d make my job a lot easier, dear!” the knife thrower grinned, directing Hitoshi over to the board of doom. He didn’t show his internal struggle on his face, just complying easily with her demands, letting himself be strapped to the board with no verbal complaints. The bonds were a bit tight, but he wasn’t about to complain to the knife thrower who could easily murder him and call it a slip of the fingers, an accident. Nope, no angering the crazy chick whatsoever.

The knife lady started her speech, gesturing wildly with her hands, flinging her knifes every which way while holding onto them, not letting go quite yet. Hitoshi tuned her out yet again, not wanting to know exactly when he was going to die. Because he will. He was going to die a simple, yet painful death at the hands of a knife happy civilian. He sure was saying that term a lot, but he had to derive some fun from all this suffering, right? Calling people names was just one form of coping he had.

 _Thunk!_ The first knife sunk into the board right next to Hitoshi’s right ear, with no warning. Well, there probably was a warning, but Hitoshi wasn’t listening to the lady’s speech. That was probably his fault, but he didn’t want to know exactly when his impending doom would befall him. He’d rather be blissful and ignorant than fearful and waiting for death at every knife throw.

 _Thunk! Thunk thunk thunk!_ The next four knives were thrown in rapid succession. One landed next to his torso, two one either side of his left wrist, and one barely grazed his hair, causing a few strands of purple to flutter off of Hitoshi’s head and onto the floor in front of him. “Please don’t stab me,” Hitoshi muttered, forgetting for a moment that he also had a mic on him. He quickly continued and tried to save the atmosphere, for as much as he didn’t want to die by being unpacked by throwing knives, he also didn’t want to ruin other people’s time at the circus. He was just that nice. “No matter how _hole-y_ you make me, I’m fairly certain I’m going straight to Hell.”

“But you’re such a darling, I think you would do great with the angels!” the knife thrower cooed at Hitoshi. She obviously didn’t know him. Although he was a hero with a license, he did do bad things. Like stealing the churros and brainwashing a man into thinking he had a ticket. He could rationalize the brainwashing away, but the stealing of the churros was on his conscious forever. At least his stomach wasn’t rebelling against him, trying to murder him by eating itself anymore. Small mercies.

“And the last dagger,” the lady with the knives twirled the last one on her finger for a moment before throwing it straight at Hitoshi. Right at his face.

Hitoshi swore that he could see his life flash through his eyes in less than a second. Death by a knife to the skull… that was bound to be painful. All of this he thought in the very short time the knife took to reach his face. But it didn’t hit him.

The knife stopped just short of his nose, and clattered to the ground before his feet. The audience burst out into applause once the knife thrower pulled the knife back towards her, revealing that it had a string attached. She then threw the knife properly, landing right between Hitoshi’s pinky and ring finger. Even though the sharp object had landed uncomfortably close to his delicate fingers, Hitoshi couldn’t care less. He was just glad that he had escaped with his life, if not his dignity, intact.

The rest of the circus passed in a daze, Hitoshi having come too close to death for his comfort. He left the circus about an hour later with too many people congratulating him, yet no phone calls towards his friends, senseis, or family made. Sitting down on the curb, Hitoshi placed his head into his hands and wondered why he even tried and went to the circus.

A little while after he had started moping on the streets, someone tapped his shoulder. Hitoshi jumped, startled, and turned around, glancing up at whoever touched him. It was the knife happy lady. “Oh,” he said blandly. “It’s you.”

“Yup!” she grinned widely. “You did great up there! Oh, I just came out here to apologize for what I did. Normally I would have my partner be strapped to the board, but he broke a few bones and had to go to the hospital, so I had to either choose an audience participant or not be in the show.” She apparently saw that Hitoshi was very much not impressed and sped up, trying to finish her statement before being shut down. “I tried to choose someone that looked brave, or at least brave enough to not break down into tears and sue us. And you did! You looked brave, you were brave, and best of all, you entertained the audience and stayed calm! Or at least you looked like you stayed calm. You kinda looked lost out here so I came to apologize and––”

“It’s fine,” Hitoshi interrupted her. “It’s just… I’ve had a long day. I have to––” he paused. “Actually, could I borrow your phone? I have to call my friends to pick me up. I’m kinda lost.”

“Sure!” the knife thrower agreed enthusiastically, fishing her phone out of her pocket. It was an old flip phone, but Hitoshi didn’t care. It was functional.

He dialed the number he had memorized by heart and pressed the call button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I like my punny version of Hitoshi. Puns are really fun to write, all y'all should take a _stab_ at it yourselves! Anyways, comments are always appreciated, I try to respond to each and every one of them. Feel free to ask questions, vent your emotions, or say what you want to see in the upcoming chapters!


	3. Queen Anne's Lace; a haven or sanctuary, complexity and delicateness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi finds a new home in the circus, which he assures himself is only temporary because he's going to find his way home soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is, the new chapter! Oh, and if you haven't already seen, I added the new chapter titles to the previous chapters. I hope you like them, I had to do a lot of research to find the flowers that would fit the meaning well enough.

“Hello?” Hitoshi asked, ignoring the knife thrower’s confused look when he changed to Japanese when the call connected. He was about to ask Aizawa to pick him up, but he remembered his training and changed the question he was about to ask to confirm it was who he was trying to call. “Is this Aizawa-sensei?”

“I no know who you try call,” an unfamiliar rough voice responded in broken Japanese, heavily accented in a French accent, pausing every now and then as if to remember what word to say next. “No… Aizawa? No here. Here France, not Japan. Have good day.” The French man then hung up, leaving Hitoshi staring wide-eyes at the phone.

“I guess that’s not who you’re tryin’ to call?” the knife thrower asked him. Hitoshi didn’t respond, his mind whirling around at a speed that almost made him dizzy. He stared at the number he had called, sure that it was the correct number. It was Aizawa’s number, he had memorized it years ago! So how did it not call the right person? Unless…

Hitoshi typed a different number, checking and rechecking to make sure he pressed the right buttons. Pressing call, this time he waited for the other person to say something first. Partially so he knew what language to speak in with them, but mostly so he knew that it was the right person.

“Hello?” this time it was a young girl speaking in Italian. “My mamma and papa aren’t here today, but they said that I can take messages from people! What’s your message?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Hitoshi apologizes to the little girl, softening his voice as to not scare her with his frustration and confusion. “I must’ve entered the wrong number. I’m sorry for the confusion, little one.”

“It’s no problem!” the little girl said cheerily through the phone. “Numbers are hard, a five can look like a six if you don’t look properly.”

Hitoshi agreed, and after they had both exchanged their farewells, hung up. “I’m sorry,” he said to the lady who he was borrowing the phone from. “It seems like my friends have changed their numbers. I can’t reach them.” It wasn’t that, definitely not. Either the villains had gotten their hands on his friends and senseis, or he wasn’t where he thought he was before. But could that even be possible?

Quirks existed, but that could be explained away by science and genetics. Scientists had found genes to explain how quirks manifest in people, although they still weren't sure what brought upon the mutation in the first place. But the multiverse theory… it couldn’t be proven true. Technically it couldn’t be proven false either, but almost everyone gave up on trying to tell people that it’s real. Nobody had found a quirk that would allow dimensional travel, but… could Hitoshi really have found it in the worst streak of luck ever? He didn’t want to think about that right now. And so, he shelved the idea in the back of his mind to think about later.

Hitoshi handed the phone back to the circus lady. “Thanks for letting me borrow your phone,” he sighed. He didn’t want to pretend that he was alright, not right now. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a town he didn’t recognize in America, with no friends, food, or money. Well, he had already stolen and conned earlier today, so what was doing that more going to add to his heavy conscious?

“Are you okay?” the knife lady asked Hitoshi. He just shook his head in response, too glum to have the strength to even open his mouth and communicate any more words at the time. “Stupid question, okay… d’you have any place to stay? Any local friends? Money to spend on a hotel room, or even food?” Hitoshi just sighed again. “Well, why don’t you stay at the circus?”

Hitoshi finally looked up at the knife thrower and spoke. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Oh!” The circus lady smiled. “My name’s Maya! Nice to meet you, uh… Hitoshi?” She paused, then continued as if she just remembered something. “Or Shinsou, if you’re more comfortable with that?”

Hitoshi nodded. “Shinsou would be better. At least your pronunciation isn’t too atrocious. Practice a little and you’ll be good.”

Maya paused and looked at him. He just stared back, raising an eyebrow at her. “So…” she drawled. “Is that a yes?”

“Sure,” Hitoshi said. “It’s not like I have a lot of other choices.”

Maya beamed and grabbed Hitoshi’s hand, pulling him around the backside of the circus tent. There was a back entrance which she continued to drag him through, never letting go of him until they reached a section which was obviously for getting dressed for being on stage. Almost all the performers were back here.

Maya cleared her throat loudly, drawing everyone’s attention on her and Hitoshi. They stared mostly at Hitoshi, curious as to why Maya would bring the poor volunteer she had dragged onto stage earlier into the performers-only section of the tent. “Shinsou here will be joining us!”

Her declaration was met with silence. “Why?” one brave soul finally spoke up, asking in what would normally be a quiet voice, yet it was projected so it sounded much louder in the stark contrast.

“Apparently his friends are jackasses who didn’t tell him that they were changing their numbers,” Maya responded with way more enthusiasm than that statement should’ve held in the first place. “So he has no place to stay, and he’s stranded! We're gonna see which job he can do around here!”

She was being way too cheery for the situation at hand, it almost made Hitoshi cringe. He was ushered to the side as everyone finished changing and cleaning up. There was no partition between the male and females, only people respectfully looking away when others were indecent. They trusted each other not to peek on each other when they were naked. That must’ve been what a family was like. Not that Hitoshi would know, given his upbringing and home life. He rewarded their trust in him as well by watching the floor instead of their naked bodies.

Once everyone was finished with changing, including Maya, Hitoshi was ushered out of the room and onto the empty stage. A chair was pulled up for him and he was pushed onto the chair, most of the circus people leaving through the front entrance, while Maya and five other people stayed behind.

“We’re what you could call the head honchos ‘round here,” the tallest man said. He had blond hair and blue eyes, sitting back in one of the audience chairs, kicking his feet up onto the seat in front of him. “I’m Benjamin, call me Jimmie.”

The redhead sat down cross-legged on the floor spoke up next. “Jack, call me Lantern.” Hitoshi balked at that, tilting his head to the side as he stared at the green-eyed weirdo in confusion. “Like a jack-o’-lantern. Except that’s too long to say, so just call me Lantern.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the blue-haired girl complained from another chair, “save us from your boring explanations and let the rest of us introduce ourselves.” She turned to Hitoshi and leaned forwards onto the back of the chair in front of her. “I’m Mauve.”

“But your hair’s blue,” Hitoshi hesitantly said, confused that her name was a color she was not. Why would people do that to their children? It made things confusing. If he didn’t know Mauve had blue hair, he would’ve looked for someone with purple hair upon hearing that name, because mauve was a shade of purple. “Mauve is almost like my hair.”

“Then you’re made for each other!” Maya laughed. “Her name is your hair!”

“Oh shut up you brat,” Mauve groaned, then turned towards Hitoshi again. “See what you did? Now everyone’s gonna be all over us like that.”  
“Well, too bad,” the brown-haired guy rolled his emerald eyes. Hitoshi could almost see his reflection in those eyes, even from where the guy was sitting a few rows back. His eyes glowed a little, and Hitoshi had to forcefully drag his attention away from them to focus on the conversation. Pretty eyes later, introductions, interrogation, and induction right now. “Jeremiah, but if you call me that I’m afraid I’d have to tell you that I’m quite proficient in hiding bodies. Call me Jem unless you want to suffer the wrath of a thousand suns.”

“Don’t mind Jemmie,” the last girl said, her hair a bright orange. It almost hurt Hitoshi’s eyes to look at, but he just endured it. He’d had way worse before from villains, and even from his senseis. “He’s always in a pissy mood. And melodramatic. He won’t follow through on those actions though, don’t worry your pretty head about it, firecracker.”

Firecracker? Before Hitoshi could ask or even think too much about the nickname the unnamed girl had given him, Jem glared at her. “I will follow through on it! It’s not a threat––”

“It’s a promise,” the orange-haired girl interrupted Jem, “we know. Whatever you say Jemmie… anyways firecracker, I’m Samantha. Call me Sam. And annoy Jemmie all you want, he won’t kill you.”

“Will too,” Jem grumbled and scowled at Sam.

Sam just scoffed. “Uh, no you won’t. Because I won’t let you. Precious little firecracker here is under my protection now, so _fuck off_ and fight someone else.”

“Break it up, you two,” Jimmie interrupted, silencing the argument the moment he started speaking. Sam took a deep breath and nodded, turning away from Jem and towards Hitoshi. Jem, on the other hand, snorted and gave one last nasty glare at both Hitoshi and Sam before reluctantly turning to Jimmie. “There we go. Now, Maya, could you explain why you brought Shinsou here?”

“Yup!” Maya bounced on the balls of her feet, and pranced up on stage, plopping right down in front of Hitoshi, leaning on his legs. “This dude here borrowed my phone after I interrupted his ruminating of something and tried to call his friends to give him a ride, but they apparently changed their numbers and didn’t bother to tell him! What dicks, right?”

Hitoshi gritted his teeth. His friends were not dicks, nor were they assholes or any other insult that they could come up with. They were his friends––maybe even Bakugou, because Hitoshi was even wishing to hear his voice again despite the awkward relationship between the two of them––and they were most likely in trouble, having been dying last time he saw them. Were they okay? At a hospital, hooked up to the proper machines? Was anyone even worried about him, or had they truly forgotten about him, or maybe even moved on, deciding that it was too much hassle to look for him and it would be better if they left him alone because they had been waiting for a chance to dump him off somewhere and abandon––

Maya snapped her fingers in front of Hitoshi’s face. He blinked, realizing that his head was in his hands and his breathing was too fast. To fix that, he lifted his head to look at the leading crew of the circus, placing his hands in his lap. They were all staring at him in concern, even Jem had gotten half out of his seat, on the edge of his chair just waiting for a signal to help him. Hitoshi tried not to think about what that meant and just focused on taking deep breaths, gradually slowing his breathing down, just letting his mind go blank so he didn’t have to think.

Once Hitoshi was sure he had calmed down, he opened his eyes––when had he closed them?––and stared at the floor. There was an awkward silence once everyone had calmed down; then Lantern spoke up, breaking the silence into nonexistent shards.

“Okay, so what job should Shinsou have?” he asked, ignoring the panic attack that Hitoshi just had. Hitoshi was grateful, mouthing a ‘thank you’ to the redhead who just sat back down on the floor, smiling slightly at him.

Mauve suddenly smirked, chuckling under her breath, sounding almost as evil as that one villain who had kidnapped Hitoshi to try and convert him. He was immediately put on guard, wanting to back up away from the blue-haired girl––and Sam had called him a firecracker without even knowing him, why didn’t she use that nickname on the obviously fiery teen?––but as he was sitting down, that would achieve nothing.

“What is it, Mauve?” Maya asked the sinister girl with no regard for Hitoshi’s sanity. Forget Maya being the crazy knife lady, Mauve was the crazy sinister lady. He’d take Maya throwing knives at him anyday, at least she knew what she was doing since she was trained––at least, he hoped so, otherwise he would be sorely disappointed; another way of saying he would be seven feet under. Mauve on the other hand, whatever she was doing, Hitoshi did not trust her with that eerie smile. It reminded him too much of Aizawa-sensei and his _logical ruses_ , which he at least knew how to employ properly––at least to the point of none of them dying or combusting from thinking too much. Or trying to murder their sensei, which was not very healthy for them, as they would fail epicly.

“He should stay as your assistant, Maya,” Mauve grinned. Hitoshi immediately shook his head, but he didn’t need to protest verbally as someone interrupted him before he could even try.

“If he’s going to be useful then he needs his own act.” Shockingly, it was Jem who had refuted Mauve’s petty suggestion. He had just been glaring at Hitoshi not even five minutes ago––maybe more than five minutes because Hitoshi’s sense of time was a bit skewed from his panic attack––and now he was supporting Hitoshi? That was confusing. Did Jem hate him or not?

Jimmie nodded and hummed. “So, what can you do that could be considered an act at our circus?”

Hitoshi wracked his brain. He couldn’t use his quirk––or maybe he could, but the legal repercussions of that would too much and people would try and sue him––but he didn’t know what else he could do. All he was really good at was puns, petting cats, saving people from villains, brainwashing people, and––wait a moment. Yes, that would be perfect!

“I can motorcycle,” Hitoshi offered. “I could learn to do stunts.”

“Perfect,” Sam seemed to aggressively bear her teeth at him in a mockery of a smile, and Hitoshi had to shove down the urge to duck under a table and hide there forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked this chapter! Oh, and before I forget, I have a new beta/co-author. I'm really grateful for hebetude, because without her there would be tense changes everywhere and sentences that are much more complex than they have to be...
> 
> As always, I enjoy reading and responding to all of your comments, so go ahead and leave them! Even if they're just a few words long, I love seeing them.


	4. Daffodil; rebirth and new beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hitoshi finds out that Jem is not completely a jerk, but discovers that he _may_ be a pyromaniac.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the next few chapters might be a bit boring before it picks up again, because I'm trying to make the relations realistic. I hope y'all bear with me though!

Hitoshi wished that he had ran the opposite way the instant he saw the circus. He regretted every action that he had taken to get to this point. Ghost town? No problem, just let him go call the Ghostbusters or brainwash a rat into investigating for him. That was what he should’ve done. But this? Now Hitoshi knew the true meaning of Hell. Both Sam and Jem were relentless.

The regret of everything he had done in his life started when the circus crew had accepted his new act. They didn’t have anyone doing stunts on a motorcycle, so they were ecstatic. Hitoshi should’ve gone with hypnotizing people, screw the consequences of the law. Anything was better than being worked to the bone by his new trainers.

Jem was the one who supervised his weight lifting and running. Sam forced him to learn gymnastics. All of this was done to train him to do stunts, as he needed the strength and flexibility to not get hurt or potentially die. Though dying was extreme, the worst that would happen would be hospitalization. Hitoshi knew that learning to do stunts was going to be hard, but at this point learning to expand his quirk was easier. Headaches and vomiting his guts up were nothing compared to the torture of working two hundred and fifty percent past his physical limits. If it were not for pure spite and determination, Hitoshi wouldn’t have been able to move an inch. He truly was employing  _ Plus Ultra _ , huh? At least his senseis would be proud of––

“Oi,” Jem called out loudly, snapping Hitoshi out his thoughts that would soon spiral downwards as he pondered how his friends were and how would he get home––“Stop getting distracted, run your damn laps you lazy cloud-gazer.”

Hitoshi’s eye twitched as he forced himself not to yell at the green-eyed asshole. He wasn’t anywhere near lazy! Working two and a half jobs was exhausting, and now going through this torture disguised as training. When he was in Japan––and now wasn’t that a trippy thing to think, as he’d never left Japan his whole life before being teleported out of it and stranded––his first job was being an underground hero-in-training, his second job being a tutor for both his fellow students and the younger ones, and his half-job being a counselor at a summer camp. It only counted as a job during the summer, so therefore it was a half-job for the whole year.

“Didn’t I just tell you not to daydream?” Jem looked up from his book to glare at Hitoshi. He just huffed and ran even faster, wanting to do better than the jerk could ever do just to spite him, despite Jem having helped him get this far. That was just semantics as far as Hitoshi was concerned.

As soon as Hitoshi started to slow down, no longer able to push past his limits from sheer will, Jem spoke again. “Did I tell you that you could slow down?” Hitoshi took a deep breath, ready to ignore the jackass that was trying his patience, but the aforementioned jackass continued. “Do you want to become a stuntman? If you actually want to contribute to the circus, you’re going to have to work hard. If you’re not going to take this seriously, then you should just leave right now and never––”

Hitoshi had just had  _ enough _ from this idiot. He stopped running and didn’t even pause to take in a breath, instead exploding with what little air he had left in his lungs. “You know  _ nothing _ about me,” he spat out, voice wheezy from running for much longer than he had ever ran before, “and if you keep this up you will  _ never _ know  _ anything _ about me. You have  _ no  _ right to call me names, and if you keep doing so you won’t ever be able to  _ speak _ to me  _ ever again _ .”

Instead of listening to whatever comeback Jem was about to make, Hitoshi continued running. He was not in the mood for this, any of this. Although his muscles felt like they were made out of liquid instead of solid, he channeled all his anger and frustration into determination to keep running, to prolong the time until whatever conversation they would have.

Eventually Hitoshi lost count of how many laps he had run, how many miles his dying legs had gone through. Really, he couldn’t actually feel his legs anymore, they were that numb. He was surprised that he could even stand at this point, much less run. How much time had passed while Hitoshi had a one-track mind to prove the jerk wrong?

“You can stop now,” Jem spoke up from where he had been previously sitting silently. Hitoshi just ignored him and kept running, too pissed at the jerk–– _ jackass _ , really, but Hitoshi had never liked cursing, it reminded him too much of his parents––to listen to any rational thought either of them would have. All he did was try not to focus on his emotions and instead embrace the physical pain, because he had to break himself down before building himself up again, right? Wasn’t that how exercising  _ anything _ worked?

“Let me rephrase that,” Jem said again, his voice sounding much,  _ much _ closer than before. Hitoshi was then jerked to a stop by a hand grasping his forearm, holding him still no matter how much he struggled. “You  _ will _ stop.”

“Fu–– _ heck  _ off,” Hitoshi snapped at the idiot––not really an idiot, but  _ whatever _ at this point––almost forgetting his no cussing unless the situation is grave. And the situation wasn’t grave yet, not until either of them were  _ in _ their grave, seven feet under––and that was a horrible pun and Hitoshi  _ knew _ , but he had to have  _ some _ type of coping mechanism, right? “You wanted me to work harder, right? Well, I’m working harder.” He huffed and gave one last tug before giving up with his struggle, just standing there as if his legs didn’t burn at all or as if his lungs weren’t on fire. If his quirk wasn’t brainwashing, maybe he could’ve been barfing up magma instead––“Don’t send such conflicting signals.”

The jerk––Hitoshi really needed better insults. He was good at puns, but nicknames, pet names, and insults? Not so much––sighed as he stared at Hitoshi. After a few minutes of silence, in which Hitoshi was starting to feel uneasy as the pain in his legs slowly returned, Jem finally spoke again.

“I wanted you to push yourself,” he said quietly, almost whispering, “but not to the point of seriously hurting yourself. Would I push you past your physical limits?” He asked rhetorically, not even pausing to await an answer. “Of course. Would I ever intentionally harm you mentally?” This time he did pause, but Hitoshi didn’t dare respond. As far as he knew, the other guy–– _ man _ , really he was a man compared to Hitoshi’s young age––didn’t care about him, mental suffering or otherwise. The silence lasted for a few minutes until Jem gave up and continued, his voice colored with a different emotion that Hitoshi refused to decipher. “Never. I’m supposed to heal, strengthen, and  _ nurture _ , not destroy. It’s not in my nature to do so. What kind of Su––” he cut himself off abruptly, and at this Hitoshi finally raised his head to look the man in the eyes. Why’d he cut himself off?

“What kind of  _ person _ would I be if all I did was ruin and damage everything?” Jem continued on with his quiet, one-sided conversation with Hitoshi, ignoring whatever slip-up he had made. Despite wanting to know what he had been about to say, Hitoshi respected boundaries––plus, he wasn’t even close enough to the jerk in the first place to be allowed the opportunity to pry for an answer––and so didn’t question the sudden change.

Hitoshi sighed. “A pretty shi––uh, fu––heck, I mean…” he sighed again. Most likely, he was going to be doing that a lot in the upcoming days. At least until he got back to his school. “A gosh darned bad person.”

Jem tilted his head to the side slightly, finally letting go of Hitoshi’s arm. “Are you uncomfortable with swearing?” he asked as Hitoshi rolled the stiffness out of his arm, still ignoring the blazing pain that had come back to his legs in full force. While he and Jem might’ve had an unspoken treaty at the moment, no matter how minor or major, he was  _ not _ going to show weakness. “If you’re that uncomfortable with it, we can restrain ourselves from doing it.”

Hitoshi shook his head. “I just don’t like swearing myself,”––he was not his parents, after all––“but I’m fine with others doing it.”

At least Hitoshi’s thoughts of Jem being like Bakugou were proven wrong.

“Alright then,” Jem nodded, apparently having made up his mind about something. Or in response to what Hitoshi had said about cursing. “Alright then,” he repeated, “we’re done for today.”

“What?” Hitoshi balked. They had barely even started with the exercises! “We only started with running, though. Aren’t there like, five more things to do?”

Jem shook his head. “You need to take a break as well as learn where your limits are so you don’t break yourself.” He then continued under his breath, “And I need to reevaluate my behavior in a corner, then talk to Jimmie about proper conduct.” Hitoshi probably wasn’t supposed to hear that, but hear that he did. He decided to be kind again though, and disregard anything that he wasn’t supposed to have listened to. Jem probably didn’t think that Hitoshi’s senses were that sensitive, and thus believed that whatever muttered thoughts he said were safe from him. They were never safe, not ever since Hitoshi had met Midoriya and sharpened his hearing just from trying to listen to  _ his _ mutterings––Midoriya thought out loud simultaneously quiet and loud, and it was a very weird thing to experience.

So Hitoshi just nodded and they went their separate ways.

Hours later, when Hitoshi was laying down in bed, he smelled smoke. His first thought was that someone was having a campfire. Then he realized that they had just had dinner, and they were not in the forest. Oh  _ fuck _ , there was no fire alarm.

Hitoshi rolled out of his bed and onto the floor, dashing out of his room despite what he was wearing. Who cared that he had only sweatpants and socks on? There was a fire somewhere, and even though nobody else was freaking out, that could be because they didn’t smell the smoke, or were already asleep.

Hitoshi slid to a stop in front of Jem’s tent flap covering thing––probably called a partition or something like that, but Hitoshi was more focused on a fire than names––and paused. How the heck would he knock? Oh whatever, fire over anything else, no need to knock, right?

“Jem?” Hitoshi called out. “I smell smoke. Are you alright?”

There was silence for a few seconds and Hitoshi just decided to open the tent flap covering thing. He paused again when he saw what was going on.

Jem was sitting in front of a stack of burning something. Who knows what it was––Jem knew––since it was on fire. For further explanation of how weird this image was, the pile wasn’t just on  _ normal _ fire, no, it was on  _ yellow _ fire. Hitoshi blinked once or twice before deciding that it was Jem’s quirk.

“Next time you decide to set something on fire, please go outside,” Hitoshi sighed, ignoring Jem’s deer-in-the-headlights look. Maybe he didn’t want Hitoshi to know his quirk? There were plenty of people like that around the world, Jem wasn’t the only one. Hitoshi didn’t really want any of the circus to know his quirk either. It was a miracle that they haven’t asked yet.

Just as Hitoshi was about to turn around and go back to his room, Jem spoke up. “You aren’t going to question this?”

“No,” Hitoshi shook his head. “You’re just taking out your frustrations. Though I do wish you did it in a place that wouldn’t freak someone out by making them think something was on fire. Even though something  _ was _ on fire. But I mean like, on fire in a way that is out of control and would hurt someone, not on fire in a way that’s––” he shut his mouth to stop his rambling before sighing for the millionth time that day. He really needed a better way to express his emotions, sighing was getting really repetitive. “Just, if you want to set things on fire, do it outside, please.”

And with that said and done, Hitoshi let the partition flap thing that was meant to be a door fall back into place, walked to his room, and tried to fall back to sleep. He would probably fail in accessing dreamland, but it wasn’t like he had any money to buy his medication. Working in the circus was just for food and shelter, not anything else––though they did supply him with clothes for some reason.

And when he brought up the yellow fire the next day, if everyone flinched, Hitoshi didn’t see it. Everyone had their own secrets, and he wasn’t about to pull them up when he didn’t want to reveal his own. He was just nice–– _ selfish _ , his mind spat at him––that way. He owed it to them for not bringing up the times when they could surely hear him in his room panicking over if his friends were alright.


	5. Red/Pink Hyacinth; playfulness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First impressions are often misleading, just not in the ways that you may think them to be... Hitoshi realizes that Maya is indeed a crazy lady, just in more of a childish way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels like it's been so long since I've updated... but honestly, I don't know if this is long compared to most people's update schedules XD Originally, this was intended to be sadder, but my fingers got ahead of my brain and typed into a completely new direction, giving birth to this chapter. Hope y'all enjoy though!

Hitoshi flopped on a pillow in the designated living room area, his limbs feeling like jello wobbling around. Before, he would—and had said—that he regretted joining the circus, but now, even through the pain, he liked it. He missed his friends and senseis, but he was making new friends here too. Jem had turned out to be nicer than he portrayed himself to be, Sam was… admittedly very weird, as she told him that he was adopted now, but he wouldn’t complain about that. Maya was practically attached to him by the hip, and Jimmie was always calm, the voice of reason in even the most emotional of situations. Hitoshi hasn’t interacted with the others enough to form an opinion about them, but that was going to change soon.

Hitoshi groaned as he felt a foot gently nudge his side, interrupting his attempt to suffocate himself with the pillow as a means of relaxing. “Get uuuuup,” Maya dragged the ‘u’ in the word impossibly long, finally ending the word once he gave up and rolled over, bring the pillow with him to rest on his chest. The floor was cold—or rather, would be if he wasn’t wearing his hoodie and sweatpants—but he didn’t care. Was resting forbidden here? Jeez, it seemed like everyone was always doing something, always in action, never still.

“You promised you would spend the day with me,” Maya whined. Hitoshi just huffed and mumbled gibberish without opening his mouth. Responding properly would take too much energy, energy that he wasn’t willing to expend at the moment. He just laid on the floor with his eyes closed and prayed that Maya would give up soon. It was futile, but it was best to keep wishing rather than just give up, right? He didn’t want to be a defeatist.

A wheeze was forced from Hitoshi’s lungs as a sudden weight plopped on his chest. “Can’t breath,” he managed to say as he tried to fight for more air. Maya shifted slightly to his stomach so he could breath, but not enough to be fully comfortable. “You want me to come with you  _ that _ badly?”

“Yup,” she popped the ‘p’ loudly, bouncing up and down on him. “You prooooomised!”

Hitoshi sighed and smacked his head on the ground beneath him a few times before Maya grabbed his head and stopped him. “At first I thought you were a freaking murderer with the glee that you threw your knives at me,” he said. “Now I know that you’re just a little kid on a constant sugar high.”

“That’s mean!” Maya pouted.

“Yeah, well, you’re a soggy piece of toast,” Hitoshi glared half-heartedly. He ignored the stifled snort coming from the girl on top of him—and that sounded  _ completely _ wrong, but whatever, get your mind out of the gutter—and sighed again. Really, there had to be some other way to express his exasperation, he was getting tired of sighing. One of these days he was going to sigh because he had sighed again, he was just doing it that often. “Fine, fine, get off of me, I’ll submit to your torturous whims of whatever we’re doing today…”

Maya cheered as she rolled off of him and pulled him off the ground with surprising strength for her size. “Get dressed!” she ordered him, shoving him gently towards the direction of his room.

Once Hitoshi was properly dressed in some clean sweatpants, a shirt, and another hoodie, he left to go find Maya. The instant he stepped out of his room, that self-given quest was fulfilled, as she was standing right outside.

“Alright, let’s go!” she cheered as she grabbed his hand and power-walked in a seemingly random direction. Hitoshi almost tripped as he tried to keep pace with her. Gosh darnit, how fit  _ was _ this girl? First she lifted him off the ground without his cooperation and now she was dragging him at, basically, a jogging pace? He almost felt inadequate standing next to her, if not for the fact that he was going through Hell with his own tort—training. It was obviously training, not whatever other ‘t’ word anyone could come up for it. Yup, training. Hitoshi should’ve probably stopped his inner monologuing lest he got even more distracted than he already was.

By the time he stopped arguing with himself over what to call his training, they had already arrived at a mall. Wait, a mall?

“Why are we here?” Hitoshi asked Maya, pulling both of them to a stop when he stopped walking with her pull. He was strong enough to be able to stand still even with her pulling at him with her freakish—bad word, bad word, abort, substitute it with surprising—strength. Seriously, was strength enhancement her quirk or something? She sure didn’t look strong, with how small she was and no visible muscle.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Maya raised an eyebrow. “We’re getting you some clothes other than sweatpants and hoodies!”

Hitoshi visibly balked at the idea, trying to take a step backwards. However, Maya finally dragged him forwards once again when he took his foot of the ground, taking advantage of his easy-to-move stance. He struggled to pull them both to a stop again, but this time Maya didn’t let him, and just kept dragging him forwards. “But I don’t have any money!”

But  _ I _ do,” she countered, not letting up.

“I haven’t even starred in a show yet!” Hitoshi gave up trying to free himself from her grasp and instead walked with her so his wrist didn’t feel like it was trying to separate from his arm.

“Because you need practice,” Maya replied. “Plus, you don’t even have a stage name yet, so of course you’re not going to perform yet.”

Hitoshi was starting to get a headache from trying to win this argument. He sighed yet again—seriously, he was going to take the time to google other ways to express his emotions because this was getting old real fast—and decided to give up. He would just choose non-expensive clothes and hope that she didn’t catch on.

“And I’m helping you pick out clothes.”

There went those plans, straight out the window. They flew so fast that Hitoshi almost got whiplash from the sudden escape that the idea made, crushed from existence by a simple sentence from a madwoman. It yeeted itself out of his mind so hard that he didn’t even understand why he thought that idea would’ve worked in the first place—okay, he was going to stop now. No more inner monologuing, he was finally going to pay attention to his surroundings. Like a normal person. What was normal anyways?

Maya shoved Hitoshi into a seat in a random store. “Sit,” she commanded him, as if he were a dog. If anything, he was a cat, not some dog. Not that there was anything wrong with dogs or that he didn’t like them, he just liked cats much more.

“Woof,” he muttered under his breath, but then he had a heap of clothing articles shoved into his face. Maya then ushered him into one of the changing rooms.

“Stay there and try on the clothes,” she ordered. Jeez, she was being bossy today… “Come out each time you try on an outfit. I’ve paired together things, so try them on together, okay?”

The door shut behind him and suddenly Hitoshi was alone, with only a mirror, a bench, and a pile of fifty or so outfits to try on. How did she get all of these so fast? What is she, the Flash? Is that her quirk, super speed? Heck, was her quirk being impossible and defying everyone’s expectations on how she would be? Now he’d seen it all, nothing out there could surprise Hitoshi now.

As he sifted through the pile of clothes to look for something that he might like, one long-sleeved t-shirt caught his eye. It said, in big, blocky white letters, ‘FUCK THIS SHIT I’M OUT’. What the flipping flopping flap, Maya? He quickly changed into the shirt as well as the cozy black pants that came along with it, and stepping out of the changing room.

“Why?” was the first thing that came out of Hitoshi’s mouth when he saw Maya.

She snickered. “It looks like your face, that’s the expression you constantly wear. Anyways, do you like it?”

Hitoshi blinked slowly. That was the first time someone said  _ that _ to him, at least, that kindly. He wasn’t sure whether that was a compliment, an insult, or a fact of life. Well, that was a sentence that he would constantly say were he not so averse to cursing. “…yes?”

“Alright then, go change into another outfit then hand me that one,” Maya said as she shoved him back into the changing room.

Thus the torture resumed, with many arguments about prices and what style of clothes fit him. Hitoshi lost most of those battles, and defeatedly trudged out of the mall with Maya, toting ten bags. She was carrying five bags herself. Clearly she didn’t understand that he didn’t need that many clothes—he was going to find his way home eventually, and he had enough there!

“Ice cream!” Maya cheered as she dragged Hitoshi behind her like a dog yet again. Gosh flipping darn fiddlesticks. They should've put the bags down first and not bothered to bring them along in their trek to the ice cream parlor. Thinking ahead was a valuable skill that Maya apparently didn’t have.

“Shouldn’t we bring the bags ho—” Hitoshi abruptly cut himself off, standing in shock because of what he had just been about to call the circus. He cleared his throat and corrected himself, “—back to the circus?”

“Naw,” Maya replied. “Just shove ‘em in a booth next to us and it’ll be fine.”

Hitoshi probably shouldn’t have even tried to pursue this argument. She was just going to win anyways and drag him along with whatever nefarious schemes she had going on. Why did he even fight back in the first place? Oh yeah, because he didn’t know that she was insanely stubborn as well as impossibly strong and fast. Really, her quirk was probably defying expectations. Flipping potatoes, that girl was hard to deal with. How was he going to survive the circus?

As they entered the ice cream shop, a wave of cold enveloped them both. Hitoshi shivered and almost went to huddle into his hoodie more, but quickly realized that he would have to drop the bags to do so. And so, he suffered in the minor chill.

“What flavor do you want?” Maya asked. Hitoshi just shrugged. He never really got ice cream—he had only had it once or twice in his life, to his memory at least. Maybe he'd had it when he was too young to remember, maybe when his parents used to he nicer. But alas, he didn’t remember. The only time he could recall having ice cream was when he was hanging out with some friends-slash-acquaintances at school. Maya just raised an eyebrow at him and ushered him over to a booth. “Then sit. Grab two booths next to each other.”

He did as commanded of him and shoved all his bags into one booth, then sat down at the next. What flavor would Maya choose for him? Hopefully not something completely disgusting, although he would try to eat it all as to not waste any food. Did ice cream count as food though? It was a dessert, but was a dessert truly food or was it a treat? A sweet? But weren't all those things categorized under food? His existential crisis over whether ice cream counted as food was cut off when Maya slid a bowl in front of him.

“I got you something coffee flavored,” she explained when he just blinked at her for a few seconds. “Since, y’know, you look like death from exhaustion and a raccoon all bundled up into one person.” That was an…  _ elegant _ way to say that he looked like shit on a daily basis. At least she had  _ some _ tact.

“Thanks,” Hitoshi said. He took a small spoonful of the ice cream and chewed on it for a second before swallowing. Maya watched in mild horror as he did so.

“The  _ fuck _ ?” she asked eloquently. “You  _ chew _ your ice cream?”

Hitoshi nodded. What was wrong with that? It was food—or was it really? No, brain, not the time for this, focus on the conversation at hand—and he ate it. So what if he chewed it? Wasn't that how you were supposed to eat…? He tilted his head, confused over the fuss she was making.

Maya took a deep breath. “Y’know what,” she said. It wasn’t even a question, just a flat statement made as she closed her eyes. “I won’t question that. Nope, not asking. Eat your ice cream however you want, and tell anyone that hounds you about it that you have my stamp of approval.” She then muttered under her breath, in such a quiet tone that Hitoshi probably wasn’t supposed to hear, “You’re too cute for your own good, damnit.”

He quickly shoved another spoonful of the frozen treat into his mouth as he tried to hide his blush. She didn’t like him like that, did she? Well, come to think of it… wasn’t this sort of like a date? They were out clothes shopping, and now she bought him some ice cream… but how could she like him like that? How could  _ anyone _ like him romantically? It was a new addition that he had friends, but a girlfriend or a boyfriend? That would truly be a shocker, as most people barely even tolerated him, much less liked him at all.

Hitoshi pursed his lips together tightly for a few seconds before releasing them and shoving another bite of ice cream into his mouth. Once he swallowed, he set his spoon down balanced on the side of the bowl. How to broach this topic? Should he leave it be? Maybe he was reading into the situation wrong, maybe she didn’t like him at all like that. She probably just wanted to be friends. But there was this nagging feeling in the back of his head, and Hitoshi wanted to clear it up quickly so he could continue enjoying their time together.

“Okay, first of all, I’m sorry if I understood this  _ completely  _ wrong,” Hitoshi started off, “but since you called me cute, albeit under your breaths very quietly, do you… like me?” He continued quickly when he saw Maya open her mouth to respond, eyes wide in shock. “I am so,  _ so _ sorry if I got all this wrong, but I wanted to clear the air because that’s what you do, right? You clear up misunderstandings before they tear apart friendships or relationships, right? I mean, I’m still new to this friendship thing, so if I have everything wron—”

Maya cut him off by reaching over the table and shoving her hand over his mouth. After a beat of silence, she responded to his vomit of words. “No, I don’t have a crush on you,” she said. “Yes, you misunderstood me, but that’s okay. It happens to everyone. And yes, I called you cute, but that’s more like an ‘awwww, that’s so adorable I just want to cuddle you and protect you from harm forever’ kind of cute. Not an ‘oh my god I want to date you’ kind of cute.” Once she finished her reply, she took her hand off of his mouth and went back to eating her ice cream.

Hitoshi nodded and did so too. He guessed that was a crisis averted?


	6. Bellwort; hopelessness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi finally cracked the huge mystery on how he got here. Well, that and he found out what alternative to quirks they had here... fuck. The mafia?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so, quick note here:  
> Hitoshi knows more languages than Japanese, if you haven't noticed it's been noticed that he's spoken in English and French. I think French, it's in one of the previous chapters, I think the second? Anyways, the reason for that is because his quirk is _verbal_. He could theoretically control someone with a language barrier between the two of them, but it would be like trying to read a manual in Hebrew when you only know Greek.  
>  Anyways, now that explanation is over, I have another thing! I created a Discord server y'all can join if you want! The link is: https://discord.gg/BxZzrqC  
> Anyways, have fun with reading this one! Warning, lots of angst ahead. And just plain weird.

One of Hitoshi’s worst moments ever at the circus occurred during dinner. Everyone was sitting down in their own circles, and Maya had dragged him over to the leader’s group. They were all eating some weird chicken green bean noodle soup with bread, which tasted surprisingly decent. None of the leaders were talking, they were all focused on their food, so Hitoshi decided to strike up a conversation.

“What’re your quirks?” Hitoshi asked. He already knew Jem’s—the yellow fire—but nobody else’s. It was strange, since none of them had talked about quirks, much less asked Hitoshi what his was.

“Well, as you can see, Maya tends to chew with her mouth open.” Lantern pointed at the mentioned girl, who was indeed doing that. “And if anyone gets too rowdy, Jimmie tends to lock them in a closet together to deal with their issues. And—”

“No, no, no,” Hitoshi interrupted him. “I mean like, your  _ quirk _ quirk. Your power quirk, not your personality quirk.” He gestured towards Jem. “Like the yellow fire.”

The table fell silent. The only sounds were the other circles of people eating and chatting with one another. Jimmie finally looked up from his food and stared at Hitoshi. What did he do? Were they not supposed to talk about quirks here? Was it a banned topic? Why was America so weird?

“...Am I using the wrong word?” Hitoshi asked. He truly was confused. Either this group had something against quirks or—oh.  _ Ooooooohhhhh _ . “Either this is a translation error, or all of you are quirkless?”

“...Yeah. I think it’s a translation error,” Jimmie finally said. “Unless…” he trailed off and looked to the others. They all shrugged, except for Sam, who nodded. Jimmie nodded back and moved his gaze back onto Hitoshi. “Are you talking about Dying Will Flames?”

“Is that what you call it?” Hitoshi tilted his head, thinking of the implications of that name. “That’s pretty ominous. Why’d you call it  _ that _ ?” He chewed on his tongue for a few seconds, trying to think of an example of a different name. “Why not… oh I don’t know, Rainbow Fire? Cause it’s yellow. Or I dunno, call it something flowery. I suck at naming suggestions.”

The atmosphere of their social circle relaxed dramatically, almost giving Hitoshi whiplash from the change. Geez, when had they gotten that tense? They practically  _ melted _ back into their seats once he had said that.

“It’s supposed to be secret,” Mauve sighed.

“Sorry, Shinsou!” Maya smiled. “You’re only level two in trust, you need to be at  _ least _ level fifty-two to get one of us to tell you.” Oh God not the game references, he thought he had escaped that when he arrived—and wasn’t that a delicate way to put it—here. No Shigaraki, no game references. Apparently that correlation wasn’t true. Darn it.

“But what  _ did _ you mean by quirks?” Lantern asked.

Who didn’t know what a quirk was in this day and period? “Like uh… controlling fire,” he ignored the flinch everyone gave, especially Jem’s—he guessed that was a sore topic among them, the weird fire—and continued, “augmented physical abilities such as strength or speed, canceling out other quirks, brainwashing,” he himself flinched and hesitated for a moment. Would they accept him once they knew that was his quirk? Nonetheless, he had to continue lest they get suspicious of why he paused once he said  _ that _ specific quirk. “Uh, stuff like that.”

“So superpowers?” Jem asked. Once Hitoshi nodded, he scoffed. “Those aren’t real.”

What?  _ What _ ? No really,  _ what the ever-loving  _ **_fuck_ ** did Jem mean by that. Quirks were real. They  _ were _ . Hitoshi fucking  _ had _ a damn quirk.  _ They. Were. Real. _

“Bullshit.”

Maya and Jem stared at Hitoshi wide-eyed, the only two at the table who knew how much he didn’t like to swear. He just ignored their shocked looks and faced Jem. If they didn’t believe quirks were real, he’d  _ show them himself _ .

“Do you know how much of what you just said is complete and utter  _ bullcrap _ ?” Hitoshi glared at Jem. When the other male didn’t respond, Hitoshi repeated his statement. “Do you have  _ any idea _ how much shit just came out of your mouth just now? Your ass must be jealous right now. Your mouth just stole it’s job. It’s  _ one. Fucking. Job. _ Well?”

“But they aren—” Hitoshi yanked the leash provided by that response as hard as he could and practically  _ snarled _ out his next order.

“Stand up on the table and squawk like a fucking chicken.”

“Wha—”

Jem picked up his bowl and stepped onto the table, prompting everyone else to grab their bowl off of it as well. Once everyone quieted down and looked at him, he squawked very loudly. It sounded more like a rooster than a chicken, but Hitoshi would allow that. He let go of the leash and Jem blinked confusedly, quickly jumping back off the table.

“What the fuck?”

That pretty much summed up the mood for everyone else. The rest of the room seemed to collectively shrug and go back to their food, already being hardened to the weird shit the rest of the world got up to. The main crew, however… well, they were all gawking at Hitoshi. It was like they’d never seen another person use their quirk before, honestly! America was  _ so _ weird. Have they never seen brainwashing before? Or… maybe they were used to it being… a villain’s power… fuck.

“Sorry, that- I was out of line,” Hitoshi mumbled an apology to all of them, all but shoving his bowl onto the table and running out of the room. He ignored the looks others directed at him for being such a weirdo and causing a ruckus, as well as the calls from the group behind him to come back. They didn’t want him to stay because of any emotional nonsense, they only wanted him to come back so they could kick him to the curb. That’s all  _ anyone _ wanted him to stay for—except for Midoriya, except for Aizawa-sensei, except for Suzuki-sensei, except for Uraraka, except for Kaminari, except for—all anyone  _ needed _ him for was to use him.

_ Fuck _ , he just wanted to go home already.

Some time later, who knows how long—every other goddamn person besides him,  _ that’s _ who—Hitoshi was still curled up in a closet. Now, normally, he would make a joke about a repressed sexual identity or something, but he was too frazzled right now to do so. Instead of being a cool cucumber and punning his way out of this situation, his thought process was more like this:  _ holy fuck they were gonna come kick him out, he had to create a plan B to get back home, no hitching a ride to Japan with them as they were going to go there next, they all hated him, why did he ever believe their lies? They were all  _ **_liars_ ** _ and they hated him and they wanted him gone and they were gonna kick him out now that they knew he was a  _ **_freak_ ** _ and he was  _ **_unnatural_ ** _ and he had a  _ **_villain’s quirk_ ** _ and they were never going to like him ever again and how did he believe that anyone was as nice as his U.A. friends? Not even his  _ **_family_ ** _ loved him, for Christ’s sake,  _ **_why would anyone else like him if his family hated him?_ **

All in all, his brain was not doing him any favors. Thankfully the door opened before he could start hyperventilating, but when he saw who had opened it, he wished that they just left him alone to his panic attack. Fucking Jimmie. Did they send their leader to him to do the honors of booting him out as gently as possible? Maybe they did have a heart, if they sent the nicest person after him to crush his hopes and dreams.

Jimmie just crouched down to his knees, held his hands in front of him placatingly, and made soft shushing sounds. What the fuck? Why was he helping him calm down? Wasn’t he going to kick Hitoshi out?  _ What the fuck? _ He didn’t understand the weird ways this universe worked in anymore—wait.  _ Universe? _ No, no, no, no,  _ no, no, _ **_no, no, no, fucking_ ** no. It couldn’t be. It was completely unprecedented. Nobody had ever succeeded. It’d been ruled out as impossible. No quirk had ever showed up, in theory or on record, that could do this—apparently, until now. Fuck.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fu—” Hitoshi chanted under his breath—because mumbling wouldn’t do this clusterfuck justice—over and over again, his voice not changing pitch or speed at all. His monotonous satanic chant of ‘fuck’s got cut off abruptly when a finger poked his cheek. The fuck?

“Do you need anything besides your gratuitous usage of that one specific curse word?” Jimmie asked, and  _ damn _ his eyes right now because they were staring straight into Hitoshi’s soul—and welp, here comes the pun—and that was strange because nothing else about him was straight. But no really, Jimmie’s eyes were scouring everything about him, and if he was able to read his mind, he wouldn’t be very shocked. Well, here was a message to the nice jerk if he could read minds: fucking  _ hurry up _ and kick Hitoshi out already so this wasn’t so drawn out.

“Fuck,” was what came out of his mouth instead. Because  _ excuse him _ , he was allowed to curse like a bitching sailor when he had such a shocking reveal on what the  _ fuck _ just happened in his life. Like, really? At least let a motherfucker calm down first.

Jimmie just poked his cheek again, and Hitoshi suddenly felt a lot calmer, more grounded. Again, the fuck? He was going to be saying and thinking that a lot today it seemed.

Hitoshi continued speaking without being prompted this time. Instead of easing into it, he went straight into the heavy shit. “I think I’m in an alternate dimension.”

“Okay,” Jimmie responded calmly.

“Okay?” What the hell.

Jimmie nodded. “Okay,” he repeated himself. “That explains a lot. How you were dumped here, how your friends numbers have changed, how your universe has superpowers while ours has other things.”

“What the fuck  _ the fuck _ do you mean,” Hitoshi blankly stated. No, that wasn’t a question, it was a fucking statement. And yes, he  _ did _ mean to repeat ‘the fuck’ twice. That was not a mistake. He is in no way too frazzled to function properly as a member of society, no siree.

“Well, you were talking about quirks and how they were like super—”

“No,” Hitoshi cut off Jimmie, not caring how rude and inconsiderate he was being. Give him a break, his mind was going haywire at the moment. “Your world has  _ ‘other things’ _ ? The fuckity flipping hecking fucking flying fuck do you mean by that?”

Jimmie blinked slowly. Hitoshi was done with giving fucks. No fucks to be given anymore. The man was going to  _ answer _ his damn question or he would  _ flip his shit _ . Very loudly and painfully. And probably attract much more attention than he wanted to attract. He’d end up embarrassing himself horribly and then go ruminate in a corner, thinking about his behavior like a child being grounded for stealing a cookie.

“Dying Will Flames,” Jimmie responded. “There are seven types, and they’re a power used by the mafia.”

What the—don’t fucking say fuck, don’t fucking do it, wait  _ shit _ he just thought it—Hell? No really, what in the seven levels of Hell did he just get himself into? Hitoshi bit down on his tongue to stop the bullshit that was going to come out, but all he succeeded in doing was chomp through the muscle. “Fuck.” he spat out blood onto the floor in front of him. Like Yagi-sensei. “Just…  _ fuck _ .”

Jimmie raised an eyebrow. “You okay?” he asked. Hitoshi just nodded, flapping a hand vaguely towards him to signal for the other to continue. “We all ran away a while ago, all the head crew,” he continued after a brief pause. “We got together and decided to give a huge ‘fuck you’ to the mafia by hiding in plain sight from them, by performing. Giving people joy and laughter instead of terror and tears.”

Well that was mildly better. Only mildly because he still wasn’t sure whether they would kick him out and abandon him to the graces of the mafia—fuck, really, the mafia?—just because he brainwashed one of them. Well, yeah, people generally didn’t like their free will being taken away from them, but still. Hitoshi didn’t want to hide from the mafia because apparently his quirk—all quirks really—didn’t exist here, and thus was probably an  _ extremely _ valuable asset to them.

“Sounds like fun,” Hitoshi blurted out, his brain-to-mouth filter virtually nonexistent. Fuck, don’t antagonize your meal ticket and possible friend, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck. He should stop saying fuck, stop thinking it. He hated cussing, why was he doing this to himself? He wasn’t his fucking parents. Fuck. Shit. No, stop. Snickerdoodles. There, better.

“Now that we’re here, yeah,” Jimmie laughed a little under his breath. Now Hitoshi felt like a jerk. Why was Jimmie so nice to him? And everyone, really.

Hitoshi sighed, breaking the awkward silence that had descended. “So uh…” he gulped and tapped his fingers against his thigh. Darn, his back hurt a lot. Why did he think crying in a closet was going to help him? Well, he guessed it kind of did, as Jimmie had found him and they talked… well, everyone did say that hindsight was 20/20. “We should… probably tell the others? And if you want, I can…” he gulped and closed his eyes tight, willing the tears to disappear. “Uh, go away? And find a different way to get home. Because, you know, I brainwashed one of you gu—”

“Yes,” Jimmie replied, and Hitoshi’s heart almost stopped. “And no.” What? “We’ll tell the others, but we’re not kicking you to the curb for this. You were stressed, you were freaking out, and you were confused. It’s not your fault, it’s whoever put you here’s fault.”

Hitoshi slowly nodded. Wow. Maybe that was why Jimmie was the elected leader. Not only was he  _ nice _ , he also was  _ inspirational _ and had people skills.

Jimmie stood up and smiled at Hitoshi. He reached a hand out towards him. “How about we go tell all the main crew together?”

Hitoshi took his hand.

And immediately, his back cracked like the traitor it was.

“Darnit,” he groaned as Jimmie laughed, dragging him out of the closet and down the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JAM (I'm Just A Man, I'm Not A Hero) Discord: https://discord.gg/BxZzrqC


	7. White Heather; protection, indicates that wishes will come true

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hebetude: i want to protec hitoshi the bby :((((((((( {also yusukewritesangst is currently in France at the moment which is why I'm finally uploading something.}

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hebetude: Heads up, I cried while editing. ( ; n ;)

“So… you’re an alien?” That was Maya’s first question. What the heck?

“Makes sense.” Lantern nodded. “We don’t have any room to judge anyways!”

Hitoshi’s head hurt. Nothing made sense anymore. How were they all so _calm_ about this? He literally came _from another universe_ and they were acting like he had just told them that two plus two was four. Which it was, but that made _no sense_ because why weren’t they freaking out?

“How’d you get here then?” Maya asked, leaning forwards onto the balls of her feet. She was going to fall if she kept doing that, unless she secretly had super balance as her quir—wait no, no quirks here, he almost forgot.

Hitoshi blinked. “I didn’t really planet, it kinda just happened.” Really, brain? Did he have to pun like that? Well, he just went off of her alien comment and it just came out. Seriously, did he even have a brain-to-mouth filter at this point? He didn’t think so.

Mauve cackled as the rest of the crew just burst into normal laughter. “That’s a good one!”

“Haven’t heard you pun in a while,” Jem said. Hitoshi shrugged, then froze. He still had to apologize for flipping out and brainwashing Jem. How was he going to go about doing that? He _had_ to though. No chickening out.

He gulped, closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed out a wordless prayer to whatever Gods that may or may not exist. Then he opened his eyes and turned to Jem. “I apologize for losing my temper and brainwashing you into doing an embarrassing thing.”

Please accept the apology, please accept the apology, _please_ accept the apology…

“No,” Jem said, completely and utterly _crushing_ Hitoshi’s heart into a million shattered pieces. He then glued that heart back together with his next sentence. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m sorry for antagonizing you even more than I already had earlier. I should’ve let you explain rather than brush you off.”

“But you had no idea—” Hitoshi argued quietly, cut off by the other man.

“That doesn’t give me the right to ignore others. We have flames, we were a part of the mafia, _time travel_ is a thing,” Jem sighed, shaking his head sadly. “Brainwashing and other superpowers shouldn’t be that much of a jump.” He purses his lips and hummed to himself a little, seemingly lost in thought, before continuing his sentence. “I guess… I guess that’s because I was hesitant to acknowledge the past in any way, shape, or form, because I’m ashamed of it.” He looked Hitoshi straight in the eye. “I’ve killed people; we’ve _all_ killed people. The mafia, our flames, our _powers_ as you could call them, were used to kill.”

“That’s a valid reason to not want to believe in quir—”

“It is,” Jem interrupted yet again. Hitoshi was starting to get annoyed by that. When was he ever going to be able to get a full sentence out? Never at this rate. “But when you kept pressing, when you turned desperate enough to curse even when you hate doing so, as well as actually _demonstrating_ your power? That gives us no excuse. We hurt you, and you felt invalidated and became paranoid.”

Mauve piped up, having been mostly silent before. “We broke your trust,” she said, nearly silent. “You’ve only known us for… what, two months? Three months?” Had it really been that long? Time had gone by fast, training and bonding with the other members, being dragged onto excursions, and _still_ not being allowed on a motorcycle for fear of not being trained enough. “And still you’ve built up enough trust to tell us.”

“I didn’t know that quirks didn’t exist here though,” Hitoshi said. “I thought all of you were either quirkless, or that America was a very, very weird place.”

“But—”

“I think that we should all accept that this situation was brought upon by misunderstandings and shortcomings from all parties,” Jimmie said softly, cutting through the argument that was slowly brewing.

Lantern nodded. “It’ll do none of us any good to be arguing over whose fault it is.”

Everyone agreed, Hitoshi felt a bit reluctant to do so himself, but he did it to prevent an argument from occurring. He had just apologized _and_ had gotten apologized _to_ , no need to make any more of a jerk out of himself.

The next half hour went by fast, what with Maya and Mauve hounding him for details on what his world was like and Jem occasionally inputting into the conversation. Jimmie and Sam went to see over the rest of the circus. Lantern, however… just stood there, hovering at the edge of the gathering, watching. More specifically, he was watching Hitoshi. It was a bit unnerving. 

When the other three finally went back to their jobs, Hitoshi turned to meet Lantern’s gaze. Why was he staring at him? Surely he had something better to do than watch Hitoshi like he was an animal at the zoo?

“Are you okay?” Lantern broke the awkward silence that had fallen on them. Wait, what? That was what he wanted to ask? If Hitoshi was _okay_? Well… to be honest, he didn’t know if he was okay or not. The initial shock had gone away, and he kinda just felt… numb. Not there, not keeping up with the rest of the world, out of place. He guessed that meant he probably wasn’t okay.

“No,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know how to get back home, I just had one and a half panic attacks today first figuring out I’m not in my universe and then that you all used to be a part of the mafia, and I don’t know what to do anymore. Is anything really worth it? Dimension traveling was never proven, except now it is. But unless the quirk user has a way to undo it, I can’t get back home. And what if my friends decide that they don’t nee—”

Hitoshi was cut off by a very warm hug from a very warm person. Had Lantern always been this warm? How the heck hadn’t he notice earlier? He would’ve been _all over_ this dude for cuddling and hugs and sleeping on him. Well, maybe not, because Hitoshi _did_ know the meaning of personal space, in fact he practiced it religiously himself. But that was besides the point - Lantern was warm, and Hitoshi was cold. That, and free hugs were being offered. So he cut off his mental rant and hugged Lantern back, shoving his face into the other’s shoulder. Why was everyone here so tall? He felt short by comparison.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Lantern asked him. Talk about wha—oh. Right. Dimension travel and not knowing if he’ll ever return home. Well, everyone said that talking about something made it easier to bear, didn’t they? Hitoshi hoped that they were right.

“Sure,” he muttered into Lantern’s shirt, and then made no move to end the hug nor speak again. How was he supposed to start? _Well it all started when we got ambushed by a villain and I’m not even sure if anyone else if still alive from that attack?_ That would be a shitty way to start a story. Thankfully, Lantern was just waiting patiently, not trying to get out of the hug nor prompt Hitoshi into beginning.

“I guess I’ll start with something less fresh than the dimension traveling,” Hitoshi sighed. “So… my parents. They… I guess they verbally abused me?” Lantern’s arms seemed to tighten around him for a moment before relaxing again, but it happened so fast that he wasn’t sure whether he had imagined it or not. “My quirk was kind of an oddball one in my family. Nobody had one like it. My parents didn’t like it, they were against quirkless people and they absolutely _hated_ villains, _abhorred_ the very inclination that anyone they liked or were related to was a villain.” He paused to gather his thoughts, taking a deep breath before continuing. “One of my uncles was a villain. He was caught, but my parents argued for _days_ over him. He was my mom’s brother. My dad was angry that they were now related to a villain, until my mom proposed that they cut ties with him permanently, disown him, and never mention him again.” He propped his chin on the other’s shoulder instead of muffling his voice in his neck for the rest of the story. “Now imagine that my quirk shows up, I brainwash this random kid on accident. My parents… well, they freaked out, to put it lightly.”

When Hitoshi didn’t continue after a while, Lantern lightly prompted him. “What did they do?”

“For the first few months, it was physical as well as emotional and verbal,” Hitoshi said bluntly. He kept his voice as even and monotonous as he could, not wanting to break down again in tears and be unable to continue. He tried to look at his life as if it were just numbers, just statistics for an abuse awareness group campaign, just another face on a poster. Numbers: he had only lived with them for seventeen years, statistics: on average, abuse victims are hesitant to talk about what they have suffered… “They starved me, they beat me, they tried anything they could get away with to _save_ me, to _recorrect_ my behavior, to _put me on the right path_.” His voice broke on the last part, and he had to take a few breaths to calm down again. Obviously he didn’t succeed in keeping his emotions out of his voice. “They stopped when one of the teachers started asking questions. Then they did purely emotional and verbal abuse. They constantly put me down, telling me I had a villain’s quirk, asking me _why_ did I have to have a villain’s quirk as if I had _chosen_ it for myself and that jus—” he cut himself off with a sob, tears running down his cheeks like a waterfall. Lantern just quietly shushed him and kept hugging him tightly, not rushing him.

After a few minutes, Hitoshi decided to choke out the rest of the story. “Th-they kept comp-paring me t-to other kids an-nd asking w-why I wasn’t l-like th-them an-nd-!” He cries very loudly into the other’s shoulder, shoving his face once more into the fabric. Through the hiccups and sobs and all, he tried to finish the story. “Th-they to-old me-e that i-if I did-dn’t do wh-what I was-s told, th-they would ca-all the auth-authorities an-nd t-tell th-them—” He bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed, trying to keep his loud, ugly sobbing in, but ultimately failing. “Te-ell them th-that I wa-as g-going to be-e a villa-ain and m-my _o-odd_ be-behavior a-and qu-quirk would-d help wi-ith tha-at!”

Again, Lantern simply stood there and held Hitoshi. To some people, that would be seen as inconsiderate and rude, but to Hitoshi, that meant that he was _listening_ , not trying to get his own opinion into Hitoshi’s story. If he wanted the other man’s opinion, he’d _ask_. Right now, he just wanted to get the whole thing out in one go.

“So that’s my parents,” Hitoshi laughed wetly, still hiccuping from all the crying he had done. “Now onto how I got here. My friends and I were out, and we encountered a villain that we should’ve ran away from. She had a _run-on-sight_ order, and the only reason why we didn’t run was because she was going after civilians.” He rubbed his eyes and sighed. When could he just go to sleep? He was getting really tired from all this storytelling and emotional stuff. Why did he decide to tell Lantern about his parents as well? “Anyways, long story short, I’m not sure if she killed my friends or not, and she sent me here with her unknown quirk, which is apparently dimension warping.”

Lantern waited for a beat before responding. “Your parents suck,” he said bluntly. “I hope you’re not going back to them even if we find a way back.”

Wait, we?

“We?” Hitoshi asked, eyes wide. Lantern couldn’t possibly mean what he thought he meant…

“Yes, _we_ ,” he nodded. “You honestly thought that we would let you flounder about in panic, not knowing how to return to your home?”

Hitoshi shrugged silently, not knowing how to answer that. Honestly, all of the circus people were nice, not only the main crew. Just… Hitoshi’s brain sometimes got ahead of itself, and he’d start panicking over the most mundane of things. He was just a man, not a God, give him a break. Men were fallible and prone to mistakes.

“Well, we _will_ ,” Lantern promised him. “We _will_ help you get home.”

Hitoshi believed that _now_ , but would they let him _stay_ if nobody could find a way back for him? _Yes,_ the answer was _yes_ , and Hitoshi _knew_ that, because why else would they train him so vigorously?


	8. Dog Rose; pleasure and pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi has a new mysterious bout of pain, which nobody knows why it happened nor what caused it... yet. He also attempts to educate Mauve on why cats are obviously better than dogs. Really, shouldn't that be common sense by now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I return, finally with new content! Wow this took a while.
> 
> I was a bit busy with some other project which will be posted soon on AO3, in a little over a week. It's some more BNHA stuff, so be on the look for it if you like TodoBaku.
> 
> Oh, right, I should probably warn everyone: this is where the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag comes into play, at the end of this chapter. Be warned, Hitoshi's mind is not a pleasant place to be in.

After he finished spilling his sob story to Lantern, Hitoshi walked down the small hall to his room area. He was _exhausted_ : crying really took a lot out of a person. If he could choose, he wouldn’t do that again. Not only was it a breach of his own privacy—albeit willingly, although under duress from emotions—it was also just plain uncomfortable. Emotions, man. They really sucked sometimes. And by sometimes, he meant almost _all_ the time.

Now he’d had an emotional breakdown with almost the entire main crew—Maya when he first joined, Jem when he snapped at the other, Jimmie when he had a panic attack in the closet, and Lantern when he told his life story. Now all that was left was Sam and Mauve! What angst would he have to endure with them? He didn’t know, and he didn’t _want_ to know. Quite frankly, bonding over things that were _not_ negative experiences of emotions would be perfectly fine with Hitoshi. Positive experiences formed just as strong of a bond as negative ones. Really, they did—believe him. Well, all his friendships _were_ formed from bad experiences—such as Yaoyorozu almost shooting him when he dropped behind her in a training session, or when Kaminari sent him to the infirmary by giving him second degree burns when Aizawa leapt from a roof and threw Hitoshi at the other boy—but that didn’t mean the opposite wasn’t possible! He just had to prove it—

Blood flew from Hitoshi’s lips as he slumped against the wall, struggling to breathe. What was going on? One moment he was fine, the next his whole world exploded into pain. There were colors everywhere, dancing in his vision like a scene from a movie that would cause an epileptic seizure to occur. His head throbbed to an unknown rhythm, fast staccato beats drilling into his brain. He couldn’t breathe.

_Fuck_ — _he couldn’t breathe_.

He must’ve blacked out from the pain, because when he woke up, he was on a soft cushy surface with people quietly whispering in the background. Ow… even the slightest sound hurt his head. The noises stopped suddenly, leaving him in the blissful silence of the dark room. What happened?

A hand softly touched his cheek, causing Hitoshi’s eyes to flutter open. Ow ow ow, it felt like the light was trying to burn his retinas out. That would be counterproductive; he needed those to see. The room was almost pitch black, but it still hurt him. “We found you collapsed in the hallway, coughing up blood and curled up in a ball,” a feminine voice whispered to him. Ow, he had to bear through the pain of not being in silence, ow ow ow.

Hitoshi finally made the last effort to open his eyes and look at whoever was speaking to him, biting his teeth from the pain that resulting from that action. It was Mauve. That was just _wonderful_. Now she would be added to the traumatizing moments bonding list. What was his life, an anime or something?

“What happened?” he mumbled through the cotton in his mouth, trying to work feeling back into his body and face. Why’d he collapse like that? Nothing like that had ever happened before, except for when he first fell into this realm… but that was just from all the stress, right?

“We don’t know,” Mauve replied. She took her hand off of his cheek and entwined her fingers together to string them out. “You scared us pretty badly though. Two freakouts in one day? That can’t be good for your health.”

It was actually three, not two, but Hitoshi didn’t correct her. She seemed too stressed, and he didn’t want to add to her load. But shouldn’t he tell her because working relationships are supposed to have communication? But they _didn’t_ have a relationship… whatever. He didn’t want to stress her out even more, so he wouldn’t tell her about the hidden emotional attack he had with just Lantern. It would be a secret, just between the two of them. Hopefully.

There was blissful silence for another minute before Mauve spoke up again. “What _did_ happen though?”

Hitoshi almost shrugged, but thought better of it. It would be too painful to shrug. So instead he decided to use his words, however reluctantly. “Dunno.” Oh wow. How eloquent of him. Instead of actually using words to communicate properly, he decided to say one useless and uninformative word. What was his brain doing? Taking a vacation? He didn’t authorize that.

“We’re gonna have to keep an eye out for this happening again, then,” Mauve sighed. Hey, no! She wasn’t allowed to steal his signature move. Sighing was Hitoshi’s thing, not anybody else’s! Of course he didn’t verbalize this thought, that would be rude of him. Oh wow, his mind was rambling on about weird things. He felt kinda loopy now that he had calmed down a bit. Was he drugged or was he just so tired he couldn’t function? Passing out wasn’t fun though, he didn’t want to pass out again.

“If you wanna sleep you ca—”

“No!” Hitoshi glared at her. No more sleeping for him! Well, at this moment at least. He was used to functioning while being tired, he didn’t _really_ need a good sleep schedule anyways. Being an underground hero would mean little sleep anywa—wait no he shouldn’t think about his home, well _past_ home, dammit!

Mauve held her hands up placatingly, and he decided to stop glaring at her. The expression fell easily off his face, as his resting bitch face—ow why’d he decide to swear again—was  _not_ a scowl like Bakugou’s was. His neutral face was just… staring. Some have called him creepy because of it. He would just… stare into your soul. That thousand yard stare was his specialty, and he was proud to say that he could call upon it at any given moment, with no effort required.

“Well, if you’re not going to sleep…” she said hesitantly, waiting until she had his attention to continue, “then what _do_ you want to do?”

“You’re not going to leave?” Hitoshi asked bluntly. Wait, no, that was bad. “Sorry,” he immediately apologized. “That was rude.”

Mauve shook her head. “Naw, it’s fine. You’re in pain, of course you’re gonna be rude.”

“Not an excuse…” he mumbled to himself, but didn’t pursue the argument any further. Neither did she, thankfully.

“So…” she broke the silence once again. “Where’d you get all your puns from?”

Hoo boy wasn’t that a loaded question. _Not_.

“The internet,” he replied easily.

Mauve’s mouth dropped open slightly as she stared at Hitoshi. What? Was she expecting a different answer? Did she think he’d thought of them all by himself? _Of course_ he got them off the internet—he’s just the only person he knew that had memorized almost every single one he’d read so far, good _and_ bad. He had a _lot_ of spare time when he was younger. Jokes and puns were therapeutic, it helped get his mind off of whatever was happening in his life. They still do.

“Well that makes sense,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

There was another period of quiet where Hitoshi decided to stare at the ceiling. Mauve was most likely scrambling for another thing to say, but he didn’t really care too much at the moment. It was rude, sure, but he wasn’t exactly in the best place right now, what with being in pain and all that. Really, not fun. Zero out of ten, would not recommend.

“Wouldn’t recommend what?”

Did he say that out loud? Oops. Best not make her any more worried than she already was. “Pistachios,” Hitoshi replied. “They’re _disgusting_. If you like them, then I’m afraid that you and I can never be, for even the aftertaste of them in a kiss would make me barf on you.”

“Ew,” Mauve winced. “First of all, I’m never kissing you, disgusting. Second of all…” she grinned slightly as she continued, “I agree. Pistachios are the fucking _worst_.”

“Thank whatever God there is out there someone agrees,” he breathed out, finally looking over at her. “How come people can _like_ that flavor? Like, how do they not realize how bad it is?”

She shrugged. “I dunno, people can be really fucking weird at times.”

And there went that topic, shelved and finished, dropping them back into the silence. At least she wasn’t as bad as he thought she was. She saw how horrid pistachios were; that wasn’t something he can say for most of his friends. Heathens, all of them. Might as well make things easy for her—she wasn’t forcing him to sleep after all.

“What do you think about cats?” Hitoshi asked.

“Cats?” Mauve hummed as she thought.

If she didn’t like cats, she was going to be instantly unfriended, demoted back to the “random chick he worked with” role.

“They’re okay.”

Okay? _Okay?_ **_Okay?_ ** That’s all she thought of cats? Forget being unfriended, she was going to be yeeted straight past that role and into the dangerous zone of “mortal enemies”. Not liking cats was one thing, he could deal with that just fine. But being apathetic towards them? Just saying “meh” and going on with your day? He had to teach her a lesson.

And teach her a lesson he did. By flipping her the bird.

“Oi!” Mauve squawked, tipping out of her chair rather ungracefully. “What was _that_ for?”

“Cats don’t deserve just having apathy being directed at them!” Hitoshi glared back. “If anything, have a strong view of cats! Whether that be love or hate! They only deserve the best, which is people fighting over their furry delightedness and loving purrs!”

“But they _shed_!” she complained, pulling herself off of the floor and back onto the chair. “And they get fur all over things and your clothes and it takes _forever_ to clean!”

“The fur’s only a problem if you’re allergic,” he pointed out. “And seeing as I’ve brought many a cat into my room to treat and love, and nobody’s complained about sneezing or anything, I doubt anyone here’s allergic.”

“Is _that_ why you’re always covered in fur?”

Hitoshi nodded, unashamed of his pastimes.

“Still,” Mauve grumbled, “it’s a pain to work on anything when there’s a cat in your way.”

“Dogs get in the way too,” Hitoshi huffed, adamant about protecting his furry friends.

“But they don’t lay on your things!”

“Cats can take care of themselves for the most part,” he said. “All you have to do is provide love when they seek it out, feed and water them, and keep a way for them to get in and out open.”

“And they always want love at an inopportune time,” Mauve replied. “Dogs come when you want them to, cats come when _they_ want to.”

“Now you’re making dogs sound like slaves,” Hitoshi laughed. “One way to put it is that dogs are like infants whereas cats are like teenagers. Dogs need constant attention and are needy, therefore more affectionate, while cats can fend for themselves for the most part, coming when they want things.”

“Which would make them selfish—”

“If we were talking about humans,” Hitoshi cut her off.

“Still!” Mauve glared at him for cutting her off. Too bad, it was her fault that she had such faulty logic when it came to the superior race—obviously cats. “Cats are selfish and mean and bite you when you try to pet them!”

“Because you’re doing it wrong,” he explained. “You don’t seek _them_ for pets, _they_ seek _you_ to initiate petting time. Dogs are a selfish persons pet, what with wanting to give attention when you want to, and cats are a selfless persons pet, because you give them attention when they _want_ the attention.”

“Did you just call me selfish?” Mauve asked.

Hitoshi just nodded. Yup, he definitely called her and all dog lovers selfish. Cats were the best—having a cat was like serving under kings and queens, while having a dog was the perfect method to prepare for taking care of a baby. He didn’t want a child. Maybe in a few hundred years. When he was old and dead and not around to be forced to take care of them.

Mauve sighed again. Darnit, woman, stop stealing his signature move! “Let’s just agree to disagree then.”

“… Sure,” Hitoshi reluctantly agreed. Not like he had any choice anyways.

“Now, are you tired enough to sleep now?”

He chewed on his lip as he debated with himself. Should he sleep? He definitely _was_ tired enough to, and in pain, which sleeping would help him escape the pain… but after all that suffering, would he have nightmares or not? It was a stupid thing to be scared of, but his nightmares… well, they tended to be about his friends, and not in a good way. Then again, nightmares weren’t ever about good things, unless they were about _breaking_ those good things and _destroying_ them.

Which his tended to be about.

Hitoshi nodded again. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll try and get some rest.”

He ignored Mauve’s relieved grin and promptly turned over and buried himself in the blanket, ignoring her farewell, ignoring the way the room plunged into darkness as she left, ignoring the way it was so silent it seemed as if everyone was dead, ignoring… everything.

Upon falling asleep, he found that he had more things to ignore. Midoriya’s haunting grin, blood trickling from his gut as an axe impaled him, his entrails slowly slipping out of him, all gooey and oozing. The way his fingers were half torn off, the bones having shallow, even scratches on them, as if someone had patiently carved at his hand to get all the scratches to be an equal length and depth; finally, his right hand was slightly twisted with no way of returning back to the original shape. That grin haunted his dreams as he turned and saw more of his friends shuffling over to greet him.

Uraraka’s left arm was swinging next to her, only attached by a few tendons. Hitoshi could see the way the sinew strained and tried not to break apart, the only thing keeping her arm from snapping and falling onto the floor. Her fingers were also mutilated; they were cracked backwards, bent into a shape that was so _unnatural_ that should _never be_. He could see the flesh in her hands pulsing every time her heart beat, blood slowly dripping onto the floor like that one sink faucet that would never turn off, no matter how hard one would try.

Todoroki… his left side… was shiny with flesh, bits and pieces of skin hanging on there, especially around his eye. Hitoshi could see the veins, some open to fresh air, others barely below the tender flesh. The half-ice half-fire hero limped slowly, dragging his left side behind him, leaving a trail of blood as he went. How much blood _did_ he have? Occasionally, something would hit the flesh and Todoroki would let out a screech of anguish and pain and _suffering_.

Asui was somehow gagging up blood, having her tongue cut off and strangling herself with it around her neck. Her body was surprisingly intact other than that, her eyes cloudy as she stumbled along.

Bakugou… his hands were ashen with charcoal. The smell of smoke constantly emanated from him, and he coughed up smoke and dust and ash every few steps. The layers of his hands were peeling off and fluttered in the wind every now and then. Thinning his hands down and down and down and down until they were less than the bones. How would he do his explosions now? Maybe that would teach him not to mess with his betters—wait. No. _No no no no no no_ ** _no no no no no_** **_Hitoshi wasn’t like that. Shut up. SHUT UP. GeT OUt OF HIS hEAD AnD_**

shut up—

Hitoshi woke up to vomiting over the side of his bed.


	9. Whortleberry; treachery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi finally gets to put his skills to the test on a real motorcycle with the help of Sam. Although, he discovers that what goes up must come down...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm finally back! It's the third week of school, and both me and hebetude have been swamped with homework already. We'll really try to keep writing these chapters, but please keep in mind that it may be slowed down due to schoolwork and projects and such.
> 
> And before I forget! Here's the Discord server link: https://discord.gg/BxZzrqC  
> I've been really bad at posting that in the chapter notes consistently, but I'll try to get better at doing that.
> 
> That being said, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

“Alright,” Sam called out as Hitoshi entered the room, clad in leather—AKA the protective gear needed to ride a motorcycle. Nothing more, and  _ definitely _ nothing less. He didn’t want to die, he’d rather get out of this very much alive. “You said you’ve done this before?” Hitoshi nodded, and so she continued, leaning against the side of the motorcycle. “Okay, since we’re inside, you’ve done this before, and we need  _ something _ to stir the audience’s attention and interest… you’re going to test the basic stunts without a helmet for now.”

What?  _ Without a helmet? _ He was fairly certain that was illegal. But… he  _ had _ been motorcycling for almost three years now, and he had the basic tricks down easily… but still,  _ without _ a helmet? Well… they were inside and he had someone supervising him right there, and Sam could call a doctor or someone if something went wrong.

If anything happened… Hitoshi trusted her.

“Alright,” he nodded. “What should I start with?”

“Well, first you should just start with riding the motorcycle around and getting used to it,” Sam replied. “Before you get a hang of it and are comfortable, you should wear the helmet.”

Hitoshi nodded, exhaling softly in relief. At least he didn’t have to do a blind leap of faith  _ before _ he even rode the motorcycle for a little while. It had been some time, so he wanted to get acclimated to it again before testing his limits, crowd pleaser or not.

With that worry out of the way, he focused completely on the motorcycle, taking in how it looked. It was a bit bulky, just like all the other motorcycles out there, but what  _ really _ caught his eyes was its color: it was a stunning, bright red, accented with a white trim. Sam stepped away from the beauty and let him inspect it more closely, running a hand across the body, testing the wheels for pressure, turning the handlebars to see how much force he would need to pull them for some of his stunts. Finally, he nudged the stand holding it up closed and held its weight with his own body. All in all, it was perfect.

“You like her?” Sam asked from behind Hitoshi. Wait, her?

“Her?” he voiced his confusion after a moment. Did all Americans refer to vehicles as females? Or was it just this universe as a whole being weird?  _ Darn, _ that was hard to get used to, remembering that he was in an alternate universe, not his own. It wasn’t exactly  _ confirmed _ that this was a different universe, but… all the evidence seemed to be pointed to it. No Quirks existed, no records of them ever existing in the first place were anywhere, and Hitoshi had scoured many libraries since he came out with the truth to his new friends. They had taught him a little about the mafia, but preferred to mainly stay mum on that topic. He understood, mostly. It was a traumatizing experience for them, one that they wished could stay buried forever and ever. He respected their wishes, and thus didn’t bring it up more than he had to to be able to get a better understanding of this world and its workings. Even then, someti—

“Yeah, her,” Sam interrupted his inner rambling unknowingly, or at least  _ seemingly _ unknowingly. “A lot of people tend to refer to cars and such as she and her.”

Hitoshi decided not to question that. It was better to leave people to their crazy tendencies, and at least giving vehicles genders was fairly innocent. Instead, he just nodded and swung his leg over to the other side of the motorcycle, leaving the other foot to rest on the ground. He pulled the clutch in with his left hand out of muscle memory, and then held his hand out for the key. It was placed into his hand easily, and he inserted it into the lock, twisting it into the start position. He then shifted into neutral, releasing the clutch slowly as he flicked the bike on.

The engine purred under Hitoshi, and he sat there as he waited for it to warm up. “So what do you want me to do first? Go a few laps around the room? Obstacle course?”

“To start with I’ll have you do laps,” Sam responded from her position against the wall. “Get the motorcycle warmed up, get you used to it again. Then we’ll take a quick break and I’ll tell you what to do next.”

Hitoshi nodded and put the helmet on, taking the time to make sure it was properly secured. He kicked his foot back, quickly shifting gears as he prompted the bike to start moving, pulling his legs up as it moved forwards. The engine revved loudly for a moment before its speed slowly and steadily increased. Then, it was all muscle memory as Hitoshi let his body instinctively turn and swerve around the room, happy to savor this feeling.

He smiled as he resisted the urge to pour on more speed, just content to feel the engine purring underneath him and see the ground pass by quickly.

Sadly, a whistle blew all too soon, shrill and loud and disruptive. Hitoshi slowed to a stop a little bit away from Sam, a little upset that he couldn’t keep going for until the engine ran out of gas. It was truly soothing to see the landscape go by so fast, and still be able to be close to it, unlike when you were in a car. And a motorcycle had more mobility, it could go places that a car couldn’t quite fit into.

“Alrighty then,” Sam called out. “It’s time to take a break, we’re gonna get a quick drink and talk about what’s gonna happen next.”

One of the other members of the circus took the motorcycle from Hitoshi when he got off of it, as well as the helmet. He briefly nodded his head in thanks before walking after Sam, who had already begun walking out of the room. Jeez, was that woman even  _ planning _ on waiting for him?

They stopped in one of the hallways, and Hitoshi fumbled to catch the water bottle that was chucked at his face. It bounced around in his hands for a moment like a hot potato game, but at last he caught it, sighing softly as he did. Wow, was he already so tired that he couldn’t catch a simple water bottle? Well… it  _ was _ thrown at him suddenly, and with quite a bit of force…

“So…” Hitoshi trailed off hesitantly, not sure what to talk about—if they even  _ would _ talk about anything. For all that Sam was very protective and nice to Hitoshi for their first meeting… they didn’t really get a chance to talk for long after that. Why  _ did _ she defend him from Jem?

“How’ve you liked the circus so far?” Sam asked suddenly. “Everyone been treating you well? Anything you been struggling with?”

“It’s been good,” Hitoshi responded. Everyone had been a little… hesitant around him after they all found out he was from a separate dimension, but they all seemed to get over it and treat him normally again. “Maya can be a little much sometimes, but she’s nice. Jem is a great motivator, although he yells a lot. Lantern is always there to talk; Jimmy is… well, he’s himself, calming and always mediating arguments. Mauve is moody a lot of the time, and she has  _ horrible _ tastes, but she’s a good person.”

“That’s good,” Sam said. Silence fell once again between them as Hitoshi kept sipping at the cold water.

“So, uh…” he started awkwardly. “What have you been doing these past few months?”

“Patrolling, researching, keeping an eye on the mafia, and, uh…” she paused when Hitoshi raised an eyebrow at her. She couldn’t have  _ only _ been doing those things, right? There had to be  _ some  _ downtime for her to relax. “I read. And pet cats.”

“Cats?” Finally, someone who understood the beauty of just sitting there and doing nothing but admiring a cat and petting it! Cat petting is the true hobby!

“They’re adorable, okay?” Sam defended herself, evidently misunderstanding Hitoshi’s shock.

“No, no, no!” Hitoshi quickly replied. “I’m just happy that someone  _ finally  _ agrees and sees the happiness and joy that can come from just the simple task of petting a cat!”

Sam perked up immediately. “I’ll take you on my next outing then! There’s a cat café nearby in the town, and we’re only staying here for another three days.”

Hitoshi nodded enthusiastically. “Sounds like a plan!”

Sam pulled out a coffee from seemingly nowhere and sipping on it. Did that woman have a dimensional pocket or something? First she magically had a water bottle that she threw at Hitoshi, and now she just pulled out a hot mug of coffee, still steaming?

America was weird.

“Are you sure you’re okay with riding with no helmet?” Sam checked. “I don’t want to push you to do such a dangerous thing if you’re hesitant to do it.”

“Yeah,” Hitoshi nodded. “I can do the basic stunts really well, so nothing should go wrong. Plus, you’re here—if anything happens, it’ll be fine.”

Sam just took a swig of her coffee, chugging it even with the steam rising from it, marking it as  _ very hot. _ Wow. She quickly finished, and the coffee mug… disappeared? Somehow. What.

Hitoshi needed to reiterate— _ America was weird. _

Sam took the empty water bottle from Hitoshi’s hand and magically vanished that as well. … He probably wasn’t going to get an answer to that particular trick even if he asked, so he didn’t even bother to.

The walk back to the huge room was much less awkward, even if it was equally quiet. Hitoshi had finally found another cat lover of the same degree as him; so he was very content.

Some guy was standing in the middle of the room with the motorcycle, so Hitoshi walked over to get it from him. The guy handed it off easily, but said one thing before walking away:

“Have  _ fun _ .”

Hitoshi thought he saw a smirk on the other circus member’s face, but the other guy walked away so quickly that he wasn’t sure. And what the guy said… ‘have fun’? What was  _ that _ all about? Was that some weird way of saying good luck? Was he wishing Hitoshi good luck because everyone knew how much of a slave driver Sam was? Just,  _ what? _

The motorcycle was already running when the other guy gave it to him, the engine purring contentedly, an even thrum reverberating through the air. Hitoshi just pushed the interaction and weirdness of that other guy to the back of his head—he could think about it  _ later, _ because he needed to concentrate on riding this motorcycle and not crashing.  _ Especially since he was going to do it with no helmet on this time. _

“You ready?” Sam asked one last time once Hitoshi was on the bike. He just nodded, feeling naked without the protection over his head. It was daunting, of course, but it was also exciting. What better way to excite a crowd than with death-defying stunts— _ without _ wearing the necessary protection?

Hitoshi revved the engine and took off, laughter tumbling from his lips as he felt the wind tousle his hair, free from the confinement of a helmet. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he rode around the room, just getting used to the slight sting in his eyes before he tried anything riskier.

He felt like he was flying.

It was a feeling akin to parkouring or free running, but also on a completely different level. While he couldn’t feel the ground thudding beneath his feet, he could feel the engine grumbling and growling beneath his whole body, a steady thrum that set a beat to its own song— _ freedom. _

Because that was what this was. 

Freedom; joy; like nobody could bring him back down to Earth again—he had transcended to some higher plane of existence, free of all the sorrows and heaviness that this mortal shell forced upon him. A place where all the worries he had were torn apart by the wind which danced in his hair, whistled in his ears, playing a duet with the motorcycle for his pleasure only.

Once he finally felt comfortable enough, Hitoshi slowed down a little bit to be safer. He didn’t want to go flying when he started doing tricks like this—it would be  _ really _ dangerous to get a head injury without the helmet to protect him. So he slowed down a little, but still fast enough so he didn’t flop onto the side when he did any stunts. Then he jammed the front break.

The back wheel lifted off the ground, and Hitoshi rolled along, carefully balancing his weight onto the front tire so he didn’t fall over. An ominous creaking sound reached his ears, just barely loud enough to hear over the engine and wind and his utter  _ glee _ at doing this—

It creaked louder, and then something broke in the front, causing Hitoshi to tumble over first, the motorcycle falling behind him.

_ It was going to land on him. _

The last thing he felt was pain spearing his head open, and the fleeting thought that there  _ was _ one thing that could tear him from his happy place, the one place where he had no pain or suffering…

Death.


	10. Horehound; health, bitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi wakes up with a nagging suspicion as to what just happened to him. Sadly, his thoughts are confirmed by his friends, and they have to cope with the consequences together...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! So! First of all, I would like to apologize for the incredibly long unintentional hiatus. First there were finals, and then tests started cropping up, and a bunch of homework... and finally I've gotten around to writing for this again. However, I do have a bunch of chapters to release all at once in apology... three to be exact.
> 
> I hope you enjoy these, and I'll try to get back to consistently writing for this story!
> 
> Discord: https://discord.gg/BxZzrqC

A searing pain throbbed in Hitoshi’s head as he drifted into consciousness. It felt as if two people had agreed to play ping-pong against his skull with his brain as the ball and iron mallets as the rackets. It was difficult to open his eyes when he tried—they felt like how heavy his school bag usually was during exams week, minus the pain from soreness. Twitching any muscle was pure agony however, as if he randomly set his nerves on fire when he moved, so he gave that up really quickly. He decided to just try and get his eyes open for now.

“… to Hitoshi?” a soft voice broke through the loud pounding in his head. It sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn’t quite place it. A hand ran through his hair, but his scalp felt wet and sticky with something warm. It was… coming out of him? …  _ Blood? _

“I checked. I couldn’t find a pulse,” a lower voice responded shortly, obviously not wanting to continue whatever topic they were talking about. Which was apparently him. “We’ll have to call the ambulance… and prepare for the worst possible news.”

Wait, wait, wait a moment… ambulance? Worst possible news?  _ No pulse? _

Holy bananas, was this what being a ghost felt like?

He grumbled something unintelligible out loud, trying to curse this situation very harshly. Calling it a baguette steamed under water until it dissolved into sand should work just fine…

“Hitoshi?” the first voice broke through his thoughts yet again. It sounded… shocked, choked up, flabbergasted… and many more different emotions.

He grunted in response, but that set off a short coughing fit that send pain shooting up and down his spine, not to mention the white hot agony searing his skull. Ow… he didn’t really want to try speaking or moving again any time soon, but he probably would have to, given how the voices in his maybe-head maybe-reality were pestering him.

“Jem, check his pulse again!” the order was barked out harshly, and the hands that were previously in his hair retreated as another one snatched his wrist up and held it steady. The world was silent for a few beats, none of them seeming to want to breathe. After a moment, though, the other voice— _ Jem, _ this was  _ Jem, _ he could trust Jem—sighed shakily.

“He’s alive,” Jem concluded with a short prayer under his breath. “I have no fucking clue  _ how, _ but he’s  _ alive. _ ”

“Everyone’s gonna be  _ ecstatic  _ when they hear this!” the first voice—Maya, Hitoshi realized now that his head was a bit more clear—cheered. His head twinged a little at the loud voice before quickly recovering under Jem’s healing touch.

The hand quickly move from his wrist to his neck, pausing to check his pulse once more before poking and prodding up and down his neck. He stayed quiet even as dull pains throbbed with every bit of pressure put on it. He wasn’t exactly sure how he was still alive, but he would let the experts deal with whatever injuries he had from… whatever happened to him.

“Do you remember what happened?” Jem steadied Hitoshi as he sat up, blinking blearily to rid his watery eyes from the stinging pain. The Sun's face was serious and carefully absent of any other emotion.

Hitoshi’s head throbbed and he closed his eyes to try and concentrate without the extra pain assaulting his nerves. He remembered riding the motorcycle, stopping to chat with Sam, then getting back on the bike  _ without _ the helmet… and…

“I crashed?” his eyes blinked open again, looking at Jem with a lot of confusion. “I didn’t even do anything different from the first time other than not wear a helmet…”

“The bike was sabotaged,” Jem answered bluntly, watching Hitoshi vigilantly as if he could keel over dead that very instant. “It was tampered with.”

_ “Have fun.” _

“Oh son of a—” he cut himself off abruptly with a wince at his own loud voice before continuing with a significantly quieter grumble, “biscuit. Was it that guy, the… darn, I don’t remember what he looked like…”

“We already caught who did it,” Maya finally spoke up, still just hovering in the background ever since Jem took over the conversation, not getting close to the two on the ground. “Sam and Jimmy are dealing with him right now. Lantern’s checking for accomplices and Mauve is sending a message to their boss.”

“Boss…?” Hitoshi mumbled thoughtfully. “Were they with the mafia?”

“Yeah,” Jem nodded, moving his hands from where they were massaging Hitoshi’s neck down to his spine. It didn’t hurt nearly as much there, so all the damage must have been concentrated around his head and neck… which didn’t sound good.

“They wanted to get a bargaining chip against us,” Maya continued suddenly. Her brow furrowed as she pondered under her breath to herself, still loud enough for Hitoshi and Jem to hear. “But I don’t know how they found us like that… well… we  _ are _ popular even though we move around a lot as a circus…”

“We weren’t exactly trying to hide anymore,” Jem replied, voice drier than the Sahara Desert. “They just haven’t tried to hunt us down in a while. We got  _ lazy, _ ” he practically spat the world out, face twisting unnaturally even as his hands gently rubbed circles into Hitoshi’s shoulders, “and we fucked up.”

“It won’t happen again.”

Hitoshi squinted at the doorway as the slightly blurred figure came into focus. Immediately, his eyes widened in shock as he forced himself to not leap to his feet.

“Sam!” he gasped as his basically-mentor idly wiped the blood from her hands onto her clothing. “Are you okay?”

“He won’t be after you anymore,” she avowed, not deigning him an answer, instead stating a fact with an odd glint in her eyes. Turning her attention to Maya and Jem, she held out a scrap of paper towards the former. “We got a number from his boss. Originally, I would call myself, but…” she shrugged and made a vague gesture with her free hand as Maya took the paper, “you’re more adept at such things than I am.”

Maya nodded and studied the paper for a moment before looking back up to Hitoshi. She slowly walked towards him and crouched to the opposite side Jem was on. Reaching a hand out, she ruffled his hair gently as she grinned at him.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” she apologized softly, as if she was speaking to a spooked animal. “I didn’t think we would end up dragging you into all of our shit. As Sam said, it won’t happen again—we’ll make sure of that—but if you don’t feel comfortable…”

A long strip of silence polluted the room as Hitoshi stared incredulously at Maya, trying to see if the crazy lady actually  _ believed _ what she was saying.

… She absolutely believed it. She was  _ insane. _

“It’s not any of your faults,” Hitoshi told her seriously, glancing up to look at Jem and Sam as well. “It’s  _ none _ of your faults. You didn’t know that the mafia was still targeting you, and you didn’t know that they would go after me.” He shoved his hand in Maya’s face when she opened her mouth to argue with him. “Nuh-uh, you know I’m right,” he shushed her childishly, “it wasn’t your fault. It was that piece of pancake drenched in sewage’s fault and his boss, nobody else.”

“Piece of pancake drenched in sewage,” Jem deadpanned with the absolutely  _ flattest _ voice possible. Sam just raised an eyebrow in agreement.

Maya licked his hand rebelliously.

“Yeah,” Hitoshi ignored the daring lick, still keeping his hand plastered to his friend’s face, “the guy who ruined that  _ perfectly good _ motorcycle.”

“ _ That’s _ what you’re worried about?” Jem gaped at him in disbelief.

“It was a beautiful looking motorcycle!” Hitoshi protested vehemently, waving his hands around like the maniac he truly was, ignoring the twinge of pain in his neck as he did so. “And it ran so smoothly as well! Of  _ course _ I’m going to be upset it was ruined! I wanted to ride it again!”

With his piece said, he plastered a genuine pout on his face, only playing up the sulking a little bit. Even as he did so, he realized his mistake.

He had finally let go of Maya.

“Welp,” she groaned as she stood up, rolling her shoulders as she quickly backed away before Hitoshi could lunge for her. “I gotta go get work done. Bosses to call, people to threaten, minions to murderize, y’know.” With that hastily spewed out farewell, she scrambled out the doors as fast as she could without it looking like she was running away.

“Come back here so I can yell some self-love and self-respect into you!” Hitoshi shouted out at her retreating back, glaring petulantly at the doors which slammed shut behind her as she finally made her escape. “You can’t blame yourself and I won’t let you blame yourself either!  _ Mark my words! _ ”

“While it would be entertaining to watch you beat these things into Maya,” Sam interrupted with a wry grin, stepping forwards to where Maya was previously crouched, “we do have to understand what just happened here.”

The mood immediately plummeted from cheerful and light-hearted to heavy and melancholic.  _ Drats, _ and Hitoshi had worked so hard to get the mood up there in this situation…

“You were dead,” Jem whispered, the slightest edge of horror edging into his voice and creeping onto his face, glancing away at the wall, refusing to look at Hitoshi’s face as he talked. “Your pulse was stopped, _ your heart stopped beating. _ Not breathing, not  _ anything, _ you… you were  _ dead _ .”

Hitoshi blinked as he processed that statement. It… actually made a surprising amount of sense. His neck was covered in stabbing pain with his shoulders only aching, and the rest of his body was mostly fine. So…

“I snapped my neck?” he asked morbidly, curiosity getting the best of him.

“Probably,” Sam agreed bluntly. Jem winced and rubbed his temples, looking like he was fighting off a migraine. Turning to the healer, she continued. “And you need to get rest. You’ve been here healing Hitoshi for a while now, so you need to go sleep. And no,” she interrupted him before he could protest, “no arguing. You sleep, I’ll keep an eye on the kid.”

Hitoshi wanted to squawk at being called a kid, but he kept it in for Jem’s sake. The man looked like he was dead on his feet—heh,  _ dead _ on his feet—like he was about to pass out from exhaustion. Hitoshi felt likewise, albeit a bit better after his… impromptu nap. Yeah, that was a good name for it.

“Fine,” Jem reluctantly acquiesced to the demand, stumbling to his feet. Hitoshi heard a few bones popping from the simple act of standing up, but held back his wince as Jem shambled from the room in the same direction Maya had went earlier.

Sam just watched Hitoshi for a moment once they were alone. He stared at her in return, taking the chance to look her up. And honestly… she looked like a regurgitated waffle. Her face was paler than normal, her eyes were slightly sunken, and her fingers were trembling where they would normally be perfectly still.

“When you died,” Sam spoke abruptly in the quiet, “a few moments after, you exploded into Cloud Flames. That… that was what I suspect allowed you to live.”

“So, what, am I going to implode with purple fire every time I die?” Hitoshi asked confusedly, with a hint of curiosity fueling his question.

Sam shrugged, and although the action seemed nonchalant, her concern betrayed her when she gently took his wrist—gentle enough that Hitoshi felt delicate, like a cracking antique porcelain doll, and that too much pressure would deepen those cracks and cause him to shatter into a million pieces—and felt his pulse to assuage her unease and guilt.

Hitoshi smiled and hooked her ankle with his foot, dragging her to him and pulling her into a hug.

(He probably wasn’t going to be allowed to leave all their sights for  _ ages _ to come.)


	11. Gloxinia; love at first sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hot guy visits Hitoshi while he's in the hospital—which he still maintains is completely unnecessary, thanks for nothing, Maya—and delivers him a letter. And then proceeds to spill his whole alien sob story. ... He's still hot, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the next one! Finally, we get more into the plot of KHR. Sorry for how long it took, but the plot is going to kick up more quickly now, although the pace of the story won't change very much. Thank you for your patience!

Hitoshi grumbled as he eyed the needles stuck and then taped into his veins, regulating his liquid intake and keeping track of his blood flow and heart beat, etcetera etcetera etcetera, he didn’t really care that much. After his third death, the circus finally caved and forced him into a mafia-friendly hospital, not wanting any questions that would inevitably crop up from normal hospital staff. He wasn’t even injured anymore! The burns were even gone by the time they got him into a hospital bed and hooked up to everything!

(It was just a  _ little _ explosion. He didn’t understand why everyone was so bugged about him dying in it. All he needed to heal was sleep and coffee! Well… sleep liked to evade him constantly, which was why he kept chugging coffee, and that probably didn’t help with sleeping, but… coffee was just so good! It was the Holy Grail of humanity!)

Maya thwapped his head gently—which really should’ve been an oxymoron—when she caught him poking at the needles irritatedly.

“Don’t do that,” she scolded him before turning her attention back to the newspaper in her hand. Hitoshi sighed, feeling like a child in the time-out corner, left to do nothing but watch the newly painted wall dry, all while resisting the temptation to smudge the smooth surface by pressing his handprints into it.

… That metaphor made him feel even more like a child than before.

“What are we even waiting for?” he complained quietly, making sure that his voice was soft enough to not carry out into the halls or other rooms. “I was healed by the time we even got here. And what would the doctors here even be able to find, especially since we didn’t even tell them what they needed to look for?”

“We need to find how you keep doing…  _ this, _ ” she gestured vaguely all over his body. Hitoshi understood what she meant immediately—his apparent immortality. “And who knows what they would do to you if they knew right off the bat… at least this way, we’ll know if they discover anything.” She tapped her ear.

Hitoshi sighed again. Right. Sam and Lantern were wandering around the hospital, making sure that the doctor looking into what happened to Hitoshi wasn’t in contact with anyone if he found out… Jem was keeping an eye out on the doctor himself, and Jimmie was back at the circus keeping it running and together.

“And I have returnedeth,” Mauve declared dramatically as she opened and then waltzed through the door, closing it behind her with her foot as her arms were ladened with bags of food. “I have pasta and garlic bread!”

Hitoshi immediately perked up at the mention of food, and straightened up on the hospital bed, maneuvering around carefully to make sure none of the wires tugged free. The bags were all plopped unceremoniously by his feet.

“I have one order of disgusting pesto, for an equally disgusting and weird person,” Mauve handed the container over to Maya, grimacing as the other stuck her tongue out. “I don’t know how you can eat that crap, it’s disgusting.”

“More for me,” Maya grinned as she popped open the lid, snatched a fork from the bag, and dug in.

“And here we have a delightful order of the spiciest pasta they had in the whole restaurant,” Mauve continued pulling another container out of the bag to hand to Hitoshi, along with a fork. He smiled at her gratefully as he took it, opening it much like Maya did, pausing to breathe in the wonderful aroma that drifted out into the air.

“Finally, the best is the one with fifty percent meat and fifty percent pasta,” Mauve declared, pulling the last container out and dropping it by Hitoshi’s feet along with a fork for herself. She crumpled up the bag and tossed it in the trash can by the bed, and then stuck a hand in the other bag to grab a few garlic breadsticks for herself before passing the bag over to Maya and Hitoshi, who split the remainder.

They ate in mostly silence, with only a few teasing statements thrown between the three. All of them were hungry and tired, seeing as they had rushed here right after that assassination attempt, barely even pausing to nab the person who did it and punish him.

Which was why Mauve was late, because she had been the one assigned that task.

(Thankfully, she also picked up food on her way to the hospital.)

“How are the others?” Hitoshi finally asked something of substance after he ate his last piece of garlic bread. He wasn’t too worried, since he knew they could take care of themselves—they used to be in the  _ mafia _ for heck’s sake, and then they  _ escaped _ and were able to stay  _ out _ despite all attempts to the contrary—but he still wanted to know for peace of mind… and because he cared, a lot.

They were practically his family now, after all.

“I dropped food off for the rest of them as well,” Mauve responded as she stretched up towards the roof. Several clicks and cracks sounded from her shoulders and then her spine as she twisted around.

Suddenly, a polite knock sounded from the door, and all three of them were tense and on guard, ready for any attack that might come their way.

“Hello?” a man called from the other side of the door, still waiting for any of the occupants inside to invite him in. “I have a letter for this room, it came from the reception.”

They all relaxed and sighed. Hitoshi dumped his trash into the bin right by him and pushed himself to sit straight up.

“Come on in,” Maya responded.

The door opened, and a pale man with white hair and round glasses entered the room, his plain green kimono swishing as he shut the door behind him. He blinked at them in curiosity, seeing as Maya and Mauve were still sprawled out across the floor eating. “Am I intruding?”

“Nah,” Mauve shook her head carelessly, still keeping a sharp eye on the man while she ate in case he tried anything funny. “The name’s Mauve, nice to meet you.”

“I’m Maya,” the Mist user chimed in, shooting a quick smile at the man before devouring another ginormous bite of her pesto pasta.

Hitoshi blushed as the man focused on him, too flustered for words at the moment. The man smiled and approached the bed easily, which caused the purple-haired teen to draw the blankets up a little as he fought against the urge to hide in them, not wanting to make a fool of himself.

“Hello, my name is Kawahira,” the man said as he held out his hand. It was warm and—no no no this was  _ not _ happening to him, he was  _ not _ going to get a crush on the nice guy he had literally  _ just  _ met after dying for the third time.

“Bork,” Hitoshi said instead, his mind blanking whilst he felt helplessly lost in the throes of love. “Meow,” he tried again. For the love of marshmallows, could his tongue just  _ please _ function properly. He didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of this guy! Well, it was probably too late for that anyways… “Hi. That’s Hitoshi—I mean,  _ I’m _ Hitoshi. Hitoshi Shinso. Shinso Hitoshi? You can call me whatever. You, uh, want.”

Maya snickered quietly behind her hand while Mauve outright  _ cackled.  _ “Aww, poor baby!” Mauve taunted him. “D’you need us to leave the room so you can both have your  _ privacy _ ?” she waggled her eyebrows at the both of them. Hitoshi just covered his face with his hands out of embarrassment. His first actual crush, and his pseudo-sisters were  _ already _ making a fool out of him!

“That would be kind of you,” Kawahira smiled at the two girls.  _ Frick on a stick _ , that guy could trade places with the sun and there’d be no difference in the world. He was half-tempted to throw himself at the other man’s feet and beg for mercy.

With one last parting tease—which was Maya’s disturbingly accurate rendition of a Lenny face—the two women were gone from the room, leaving Kawahira and Hitoshi  _ all alone. _

“Now that they are gone, I must give this to you,” Kawahira smiled at the hospitalized, not-of-this-world, dumbstruck Hitoshi. The man handed an envelope to the paralyzed patient with a patient grin, waiting easily for Hitoshi to remember how to move with a hot person watching him and  _ speaking _ to him and  _ oh God— _

Hitoshi finally moved and took the envelope from Kawahira, and saw that his name was lettered on it in fanciful script. His brain focused in on that one detail alarmingly quickly.

His  _ name. _ Was  _ on the envelope. _

And he only gave this man his name a few moments ago.

“And just what do you mean by this?” he looked distrustfully at the hot yet now suspicious man still hovering by the side of the hospital bed, not opening the letter yet. “I wasn’t aware that you knew me beforehand.”

“I’ll answer any questions you have after you read the letters contents,” Kawahira still smiled the same, face not even twitching at the sudden suspicion from the purple-haired teen.

Hitoshi watched his face for a moment before glancing back down at the letter in his hands, still keeping the man in his peripheral vision as he opened up the letter and read it.

_ I Prescelti Sette. _

Hitoshi could practically  _ feel _ his sanity fraying more and more as he read the letter, not wanting to believe the words that were on the page. They wanted  _ him, _ a  _ civilian _ —as far as they knew, anyway—to go on a series of missions with veteran members of the  _ mafia? _

“You’re crazier than a hotdog dipped in salted butter,” he said, vaguely horrified as he slipped the paper back into the letter and set it on the stand next to the bed. “You don’t even know how strong I am. Heck,  _ I _ don’t even know how strong I am!”

“It’s okay,” Kawahira tried to soothe Hitoshi’s frazzled nerves. “It must be really hard for one in your certain situation to understand everything. After all, you were dumped into this world quite abruptly, with no means of communication or information.”

“Um,” Hitoshi blinked at the man, not quite calmed down, but coherent enough to understand what he was talking about. “How did you know?”

“I’m attuned to the Earth in a way nobody else is,” Kawahira admitted easily, pulling a chair over to where he was standing so he could sit instead while speaking. “I felt the strongest Cloud Flames I had felt in… many,  _ many _ years enter this Earth.”

“What are you?” Hitoshi asked curiously, not paying too much mind to the rudeness of the question he had just asked. He just watched the man come to a conclusion and start his story.

Kawahira wove a tale of another race, one before the time of humans. How this race started to dwindle, and the people dying off, the Earth crumbling as it no longer had the power to sustain itself… how there were only two left, and then the other left Kawahira alone so she could mingle with the humans, doomed to forever be the one to find new people to support the Earth where he could not…

The story finally came to an end, and Hitoshi lowered his eyes to the floor as he thought about it. About the truth, that he had to join this group so they could give their respective Flames into an object to keep the Earth powered…

Honestly, it was a no brainer.

“I’ll be there,” Hitoshi nodded and looked up at Kawahira, only to receive the most dazzling and thankful smile he had ever seen in his entire life.

“Thank you,” the man bowed sincerely as he stood up, pushing the chair back against the wall as he walked over to the door and opened it. He looked back and sent one last smile. “Get well soon, Hitoshi-kun.”

With that, the door closed, and the smile was gone, making Hitoshi’s world feel so much dimmer without that source of light around.

“Oh God,” Hitoshi said quietly, looking at the envelope on the table. “He’s hot.”

Distantly, he realized that was probably a bad idea. He needed to go scream into a pillow, right here and right now, in his hospital bed, with the IV drip in him. Who cared about social decency? Flapping hot person who tried to flipping recruit Hitoshi into the mafia—pretty much succeeded too—and handed out free information about the world like it was candy. How did—what was his name? Kawahira?—know that Hitoshi wasn’t from this universe? Well, he didn’t specifically  _ say _ that he knew, but still…

Maya popped her head into the room, took one glance at him smothering his face into a pillow and quietly screeching to himself, and laughed. “So how’d your date go?”

He was so screwed. He had to tell his pseudo-family that he was going to accept the offer into the mafia that Mister Hot Stranger Danger had given him—along with an explanation and backstory.

Well, maybe they’d invite the cute guy—Kawahira, darnit,  _ Kawahira _ —to his funeral? At least he’d be happy then.


	12. Rhododendron; I am dangerous, danger, beware

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi has to pretend to be a lamb amongst all of the wolves in the I Prescelti Sette, but things don't... go exactly as planned. At least the Storm is staying quiet? And who even knew what in the banana-strawberry split the Mist was thinking about... oh, and the Sun turned out to actually be a jerk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the last update of today! I hope you enjoy them all! Thank you so much for reading this far, and waiting throughout the very long accidental hiatus.

“—nd make sure you don’t give anything away to them, don’t tell them about your immortality, don’t even let them know that you know exactly how your Flames work or who they are or eve—”

Hitoshi sighed and tuned Lantern’s nervous rambling out, instead thinking back to what stipulations he received for being allowed to go through with meeting the I Prescelti Sette.

_ “If this Kawahira wants the strongest seven of each Flame type, then… the six you’ll most likely meet are  _ them. _ You can’t let them know about you, what you can really do, who you really are.” _

_ “So, you want me to act stupid?” _

_ “Basically. If you act like an airhead and make them believe that you’re afraid of them… then they won’t dare even  _ think _ of you being strong enough to oppose them, or even smart enough to outthink any of them.” _

He really didn’t want to act like an airhead and coward. It felt… annoying, like each word he was speaking grated on his very being. Pretending like he was too stupid to understand anything that was happening, and too afraid to do anything about it… it made him feel like he was chained to one spot, wrapped up in cold metal and biting wire, digging underneath his skin and making him want to scream.

But he knew that if any of the mafia really knew what he could do, that feeling would only get  _ worse. _ So he had to hide, to mask who he was, to play the part of the fool so they wouldn’t suspect anything was off about him.

(And it gave him an excuse to not really understand how Flames normally worked.)

_ “Sun, Rain, Mist, Storm, Lightning, Sky… we know for sure who the Sun, Mist, Storm, and Lightning will be. As for the Rain and Sky… you will have to go in mostly blind. However, we can help and tell you how to not get ensnared in a Sky’s thrall without your consent.” _

_ “ _ Ensnared in a Sky’s thrall?  _ They can  _ do  _ that?” _

_ “Well… only the very strong ones can. And this Sky  _ must _ be the strongest of them all to be a part of this I Prescelti Sette that Kawahira told you about.” _

Hitoshi shuddered to even think of being forced under someone’s control, no matter how he felt about it at the time. To be forced into a state of calm, and chained to one person without his consent, made to  _ like _ them…

He’d rather die over and over again, in a loop, never to escape the same death.

_ “There’s only one person the Sun can be, for sure. Renato Sinclair, the World’s Greatest Hitman… for sure, it can only be  _ him _ who receives this duty. He’s ruthless, and some even say that he can read minds… really, he’s just a heartless bastard who only cares for himself.” _

“—sure that you have everything, and that you’re ready? What if yo—”

“Yes,” Hitoshi finally interrupted Lantern, exasperated at the nervous rambling the other was doing.  _ He _ was the one who had to pretend to be an idiot in front of the World’s Best, not  _ Lantern! _ “I have everything, so you can stop ranting.”

“You can’t blame me!” Lantern rolled his eyes as his hands fidgeted by his sides, wanting to do nothing but fuss over Hitoshi. “I’m worried! You know who you’re going to have to fool!”

_ “Next is the Lightning… Verde. He is smart enough to have earned the moniker of Da Vinci’s Reincarnation, and he puts all that intelligence into science and experimentation. In reality, he doesn’t care who he’s working on or dissecting, and will easily betray others to satiate his own curiosity.” _

“Yeah,” Hitoshi mumbled and shuddered slightly, mind flashing through the four members that they  _ did _ know… and he smirked, feeling the chains that were tying him down earlier break. “We do know. And because of that knowledge, I know exactly how to push their buttons and drive them  _ nuts _ without them suspecting a thing, other than me being a slightly more annoying than normal civilian.”

“You’re absolutely suicidal,” Lantern groaned and facepalmed, lamenting the lack of self-preservation in the Cloud user standing before him. “You’re even worse than Sam!”

_ “And then there’s the Storm, Fon, or Fēng as he is sometimes called. He is the Martial Arts Master, and is said to know over a hundred styles of hand-to-hand combat… he is calm and collected, eerily the opposite of how a Storm is always said to be—though we both know that means nothing in actuality. He is with the Triads, and is no less dangerous than any of the others in this I Prescelti Sette… he is possibly one of the most dangerous there, if only for the fact that he knows how to keep his temper reigned in.” _

“Yeah, well, I can afford to be worse than Sam,” Hitoshi laughed as he placed in the piercings that he normally would have in for show at the circus when he was doing stunts.  _ Immortal Skull _ indeed… really, did  _ Maya _ have to choose his moniker for him? At least he got  _ some _ influence on what he looked like on stage… and at least he liked the piercings and such.

(The chain on his lip was all swishy when he twirled around, and it made him want to giggle like a little child. It was so funny and adorable!)

_ “At last, we have the Mist, Viper. Nobody knows their gender, and it’s held as one of the greatest mysteries in the mafia. They’re an information breaker, and a damn good one at that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew where we were this whole time, or even what we ate for breakfast… you’re going to have to be incredibly careful around them, since we don’t know all the things they do.” _

Lantern grimaced. “God help us all,” he mumbled towards the sky, groaning as all that did was make Hitoshi cackle even harder. Jeez, the purple-haired teen was spending  _ way _ too much time around Mauve and Maya at this rate…

“Well, I have to be off now,” Hitoshi waved at Lantern as he started jauntily down the street, whistling purposely off-key as he heard all the fast-paced Italian around him. He didn’t even need to look down at the map he was given—he had it memorized at this point, but he put his hand in his pocket to make sure it was there so he could pull off his act without giving anything away.

A few minutes later, he stopped in front of a building and let a mask of nervousness and apprehension fall onto his face. He suppressed the gag that built up in his throat by thinking about how stupid these people would feel if they figured out a civilian had tricked them all… and he opened the door.

Only two people were there at that point, which made Hitoshi sigh internally in relief, seeing as he would only have to make an absolute fool out of himself in front of these two for now. The first, Hitoshi immediately recognized as the Storm user, Fon, from all the descriptions he was given of the other. And honestly, those descriptions didn’t do him any justice. The red-clad man had a gentle smile on his face even as he made sure to carefully keep an eye on everyone in the room. Hitoshi immediately fought back a blush at that smile, feeling flustered at how nice the Storm user looked. Instead of making a fool of himself so early, he turned to look at the other person.

Which led Hitoshi to blink at the woman in the room, who wore such strange clothes, and a puffy hat on that. She looked so weird, and he was hard-pressed not to burst out into laughter and start rolling around on the floor. First of all, that wouldn’t… actually, that might fit in with his image. Not really his image of a coward, though, so… darn.

Hitoshi almost visibly recoiled when he felt  _ something _ try and grab at his Flames  _ and _ Quirk. Instead, he just subtly pulled them in on themselves, not giving any inclination at having felt anything, playing it off as his Flames instinctively recoiling. While he had to play the part of a stupid, idiotic coward, he didn’t have to play off his instincts as being overly-trusting.

“What is your name?” the woman asked gently, as if she hadn’t just tried to tie his Flames to hers by force. Yup, this is the supposedly strongest Sky.

“Normally, you’d give your name first when asking someone for theirs,” Hitoshi grinned, continuing energetically before either of the two could answer. “However, I will make an exception this one time! I am Skull, the Immortal Stuntman, the one even the Grim Reaper hates!” He finished off with an over exaggerated bow, flourishing wildly like he normally would on stage. After all, bigger was always better, and what made it even better than that was the fact that he was wearing a bunch of shiny jewelry and piercings… maybe he should add a signature marking on his face using makeup? It was normal in the circus, and it would make the rest of the I Prescelti Sette think that he was stupid and trying to attract attention…  _ and _ reinforce the idea he was a complete dumbass.

The woman just giggled, but the Storm’s eyes narrowed slightly even through the smile before his face cleared up back into perfect serenity. Hitoshi cursed briefly in his head as he realized why the Storm was suddenly suspicious. He had portrayed a moment of clarity, smarts, something that his mask shouldn’t have… and then plastered on his mask so thickly that he was lucky the Sky didn’t seem to notice anything.

“I’m Luce, a Sky Flame user,” she smiled genially, obviously giving her Flame type away—even if it was already obvious to a  _ blind _ person what with how she kept trying to snatch at Hitoshi’s flames… too bad he already knew how snatching at people’s minds and lifeforces felt, what with how he brainwashed people with his Quirk—so  _ they _ would tell her their Flame type.

(Not that she didn’t already  _ know _ what Flames they had. Hitoshi wasn’t actually stupid, no matter how he was forced to act. Damn mask.)

“My name is Fon,” the martial artist continued smiling, not deigning to share any more details about himself. Hitoshi wholeheartedly approved as he snatched a chair at the table, not sharing his already obvious Flame type as he stayed mostly quiet, just humming random tunes off the top of his head.

One by one, the others trickled in through the door. First was Verde, the Lightning; next was Viper, the Mist information broker; then came a Rain, one bearing an air and stance that Hitoshi recognized some Pro Heroes carrying—even Midoriya had settled into it—and all of the military that he had come in contact with.

Finally, the door opened for the last time, and Renato Sinclair himself came waltzing in like he owned the whole darn world. He slid onto the chair so smoothly that Hitoshi thought he was just sliding across ice for a moment.

Honestly, Hitoshi could believe how the man had such respect in the mafia. Along with the obvious skills he had, he was also quite hot. He almost looked aristocratic, and Hitoshi had no problems understanding why so many women—and men—would swoon over him and clamber over each other for his attention. Hitoshi himself might have wanted to do that if he were less jaded to the world, and much,  _ much _ more trusting.

They were eventually pressed into introducing themselves by Luce, who evidently  _ already _ had most of them wrapped around her little pinky. Hitoshi coughed lightly into his hand to cover up the cold claws that were sinking into him every time he had to pull his Flames away from hers, and gulped down the food that was slowly crawling up his throat and trying to escape.

At last, it was Hitoshi’s turn to introduce himself. He straightened up immediately and grinned like an idiot when everyone’s attention was pinned on him, ignoring the burning in the back of his throat and eyes as he forced himself to play his part, not matter how desperately he wanted to show who he really was.

“Ah, I’m the Immortal Stuntman, Skull, the one the Grim Reaper hates!” Hitoshi declared passionately, shooting a bright grin towards his audience. “I was told I had Cloud Flames!”

“You were  _ told _ you had Cloud Flames?” the Rain—Lal Mirch—asked incredulously. She obviously bought his whole act, hook, line, and sinker.

“Obviously he’s a civilian,” Renato scoffed haughtily, even going as far as to turn up his nose and look down at Hitoshi. “None of us have even  _ heard _ his name before, after all.”

“I wonder why he calls himself immortal,” Verde mumbled under his breath, eyeing Hitoshi with such an expression that made him want to lash out and take the scientist’s head off in one swipe.

“He’s just boasting,” the Sun user responded critically, not even looking at Hitoshi anymore. That soggy muffin… Hitoshi felt ill, but swallowed his gag and instead grinned brightly at all of them, although he wanted to projectile vomit all across that brand new, crisp suit the other was wearing. And to think he was thinking of giving the man a chance before…

“Now, now,” Luce placated all of them, “I’m sure he’ll contribute to our team nicely. Why don’t we all give him a chance?”

Reluctantly, they all agreed.

(Tellingly, neither the Mist nor the Storm spoke one word during that whole interaction. Hitoshi just hoped that the Mist wouldn’t give him away—since the Storm hadn’t given him away already, he could tentatively trust him not to say anything… but the Mist? They would do  _ anything _ for money…)

Hitoshi’s grin widened as he felt the shackles snap into place, cementing his prison here.


	13. Ophrys Fly; mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hitoshi decided to take a contract that lead him to his very own circus. His methods of pulling off that job turn out to be... very. Interesting. Indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I've finally churned out another chapter! I hope you guys like this one as much as you did the rest, as I poured my heart and soul into this one! Thank you for taking the time to read it!

Hitoshi smirked as he peeked into the cafeteria.  _ Perfect. _ All of his targets were there, eating peacefully. Too bad he would have to break up the peace with a bit of…  _ mayhem. _

He carefully opened the doors and slipped through nonchalantly, carrying the heavy briefcase with him. Hopefully nobody would stop him—he couldn’t afford being stopped at this point in the mission. The others would  _ kill _ him if he messed this up.

After what seemed like forever, he reached his target table. Lantern glanced up and was about to greet him when Hitoshi cut him off by slamming the briefcase in his normal spot, the sound reverberating around the whole room. The cafeteria went silent in a matter of moments. Hitoshi took a deep breath and leapt onto the bench so he could see everyone and everyone could see him.

“Alright, listen up all of you!” he shouted out as loudly as he could, catching the dwindling attention of all the people eating. “A certain someone who wishes to remain anonymous has noted that all of your grammar has been dwindling over the past few years! And I have been hired to take care of that!”

Nobody made a sound, though Hitoshi could see a few people rolling their eyes and turning back to their food once they determined that this would just be a boring announcement.

Hitoshi’s eyes narrowed and he turned toward his briefcase.

Within a few seconds, a huge whiteboard thudded in front of him and the whole room went silent once more. Hitoshi fished out a yard stick as well and smacked the first bit of writing on the whiteboard to draw everyone’s attention to it.

“Today’s conjugation lesson is one that my mysterious benefactor recognized as the one that almost  _ everyone _ here uses incorrectly,” Hitoshi informed them calmly once he knew their attention wouldn’t drift again. “This is the verb  _ yeet. _ Now, can anyone tell me what yeet means?”

The room was still for a minute or two until some brave soul raised his hand. Hitoshi smiled and pointed at him using the yard stick.

“Yes, you there?” he gestured for the man to stand up. The other did shakily and uncertainly, but did so nonetheless. “Well?”

“Uh, I think it’s a sort of way to say yes?” the man stated in a manner one would ask a question rather than answer one.

“That’s correct,” Hitoshi just nodded. “That’s one of the definitions. Do you know any more?”

“To… throw something?” the man continued hesitantly. He still wasn’t sure of his answer. “And uh… to express excitement, I think?”

“That’s a good enough definition as any!” Hitoshi clapped a few times before gesturing for the man to sit down once again. “And while you can yeet a thing, you can also yeet a  _ person _ as well. It’s not limited to inanimate objects. Say… I could yeet you out that window, or I could even yeet myself off the roof. Understand?”

The room was silent.

(“Is he… okay?” one guy asked his friend. “Like, mentally stable? He shouldn’t be able to talk about throwing himself off the roof so easily otherwise…”

“Maybe he needs help?” his friend responded uneasily. “Maybe this is just a cry for help…? And he just desperately wants someone to stop him…?”

They both watched as the stuntman continued his rant.

They both decided that this was out of their depths and that they couldn’t help.)

“So, we’ll start with the simple stuff! The indicative!” Hitoshi forged on nonetheless through the silence, stubborn in completing this job just as well as he would any other. “For the singular first and second person, and the plural first, second, and third person, it’s all the same: yeet. However, for the singular third person, it’s slightly different: yeets.  _ You got that? _

“And then comes the subjunctive! Going down the list is: that I yeet; that you yeet; that he or she yeets; that we yeet; that y’all yeet; and that they yeet. Remember all of that, okay? We have a short quiz at the end.

“The optative is next! Yeeten; yeeten; yeetens; yeeten; yeeten; yeeten! Alright? It may be a lot to stomach, but if you forget any of it… well, you’ll have to answer to my mysterious benefactor! And you don’t want that!

“Alright, now is the imperative! No singular first person for this one, but minus that, going down the list is: yeet; yeet; yeet; yeet; and yeet! That one’s simple to remember, and I’ll be  _ very very disappointed _ if you forget that one! Okay?

“Now for the participle! This one is simple as well! It is: yeeting; yeeting; yeeting; yeeting; yeeting; and yeeting! Remember all of this, will you? The simple ones should be like second nature to you! The harder ones should be the ones you put all your brain power into, okay?

“And then comes the future!  _ Back to the future, baby! _ Anyway, this is: will yeet; will yeet; will yeet; will yeet; will yeet; and will yeet! Simple, right? Most of these are! Remember what I said earlier! Put all your brain power into the harder ones!

“Sadly, there’s no past for this verb, but there is a perfect tense! This! One! Is: had yoten; had yoten; had yoten; had yoten; had yoten; aaaaaaaaaand had yoten! You keeping up with all of this? You there! The one taking notes! Good job! Everyone should be following her example! Mush, mush, minions!

“Now for the simple tense! Since I’m getting tired, and the author is getting even more tired what with mashing fingers all across the keyboard frantically in order to get this written last minute, I’ll make this one simple for you! It’s just yote all across the board!

“Alright! Getting closer! Now! For! The! Habitual! It’s! All! Used to yeet!

“Imperfect tense! Finally, one that’s a bit more diverse! Going down the list, it is: was yeeting; were yeeting; was yeeting; were yeeting; were yeeting; and were yeeting! Almost there all of you! The next one is the last one! Do you remember everything so far! I’d be perfectly willing to recap everything if you don’t remember! But then again, you can just read over it again if you don’t remember anything! Except for the real people in front of me! Unless you wrote notes, like that wonderful gal over in the corner!

“Anyway! Perfect progressive is the last one! Aaaaare youuuuuu rrreeeadddddyyyyyyyyy? It! Is! Coming! Right! Now! As! … Just  _ had been yoten _ all across the board. Sad. That’s really anticlimactic, darn. Well… hope you remember all of that! Because you have a test tomorrow! And those who  _ don’t _ remember… get to have knives thrown at them by our mysterious benefactor.”

With that, Hitoshi shoved the huge whiteboard and yard stick back into his briefcase using the power of anime physics and dragged it off of the table, jumping off the bench as he went. With his job finished, he waved jauntily at everyone as he left the cafeteria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY APRIL FOOLS ALL OF YOU! XD
> 
> Don't worry, I'm working on the real next chapter, not just this one. Hope you liked it though!


	14. Nettle; cruelty, stinging, to provoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only their second mission being arranged, and so much had already gone _so_ wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's another chapter! It's a little longer than my average chapter here since I got a little carried away with writing the ending, but... that just means there's more to read! :) Prepare to see a little bit more suffering here for Hitoshi... poor boi. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Also, I keep forgetting to do this, but here's the link to the Discord! https://discord.gg/BxZzrqC Feel free to join and chat anytime!

Hitoshi mumbled curses under his breath as he hid the rapidly healing stab wound under all his leather clothing. He thanked whatever deity out there that was listening to him that the blood wasn’t very noticeable in all the leather. … Though he was going to have to come up with an excuse as to how he tore his clothes, yet was still uninjured.

The first mission had gone… horribly, in Hitoshi’s humble opinion. There was absolutely  _ no _ cooperation or communication in their “teamwork”, if one could even call it that. Honestly, Hitoshi was just surprised that all of them were alive—well, he supposed that’s why they were called the World’s Best.

(Apparently teamwork was nowhere in that resume.)

Right after the debriefing, Hitoshi rushed off as quickly as he could, making sure to cover up the tear in his clothing without making it obvious as to what he was doing. He heard Renato scoff behind him, making some comment about how he was “a civilian, and had no guts for these things.”

That son of a biscotti… the things Hitoshi would love to do to him if he ever got his hands on that salt-flavored popsicle dipped in mud… really, the dude had such a superiority complex, and it made Hitoshi wonder if he was compensating for anything  _ lacking _ in his life.

“Is everything alright?”

Hitoshi abruptly whirled around, purposefully tripping and stumbling at the last second to make up for his lapse in character. He forced a squeak and shoved his hand over his mouth dramatically as his eyes widened. Staring at the one who had snuck up on him, he recognized that it was Fon. Thankfully, everybody else was still inside.

“Ah,” Hitoshi laughed nervously, not needing to fake it since he wasn’t sure if the martial artist would give him away or not, “you startled me! Don’t do that!” For good measure, he threw in a sulking pout, playing out the role of the brat.

“My apologies,” Fon hid his twitching mouth behind a sleeve, probably fighting back a grin at Hitoshi’s over-the-top acting. “I was simply wondering if you were alright? I saw you getting attacked with a sword back there, and you were hiding your side from us…”

“Oh, no, I’m fine!” Hitoshi’s arms whirled around frantically even as he subtly moved so the leather and fabric would line up to make it look like the suit was in one piece. “See? I didn’t get hurt! The great Skull-sama would never let his guard down to such a degree!”

“Indeed,” Fon agreed easily, his eyes flitted uncertainly between the hidden torn fabric and Hitoshi’s face, trapped behind careful layers of makeup and metals piercings and chains. “I apologize for assuming such a thing. It is only natural to be… worried, after all.”

Hitoshi’s face scrunched up in honest confusion. Why did the martial artist pause like that? Sure, he  _ did _ get hurt, and Fon actually did see him get injured even if he was confused at the moment… so what was with the slight emphasis on that word?

“There’s no need for you to be worried about me!” Hitoshi declared brightly, flashing an only mostly fake grin at Fon. “The great Skull-sama can take care of himself! After all, what would his devoted fans do if he ever got injured?”

(Honestly… they would probably throw whoever hurt him off of a bridge into a spike pit full of piranhas and then commit seppuku themselves… his fans could be really scary sometimes.)

“I can see that now,” Fon nodded, seemingly coming to a conclusion as his eyes settled on Hitoshi’s face, becoming serene once again. “I suppose I was only worried given your current status in this group, and  _ abilities. _ ”

Oof. That was almost blunt seeing as how the Storm user was dancing around the subject not even a minute ago. Well, it was time to bluff his way out of this, he supposed.

“My skills are perfectly fine!” Hitoshi puffed up like a wet cat, pout full force as if someone had stolen his ice cream straight from his mouth. Wait… that wouldn’t really make him angry if it were Fon that did that. Drats. Abort, abort, different metaphor! Maybe… like someone had just kicked a cat in front of him? But the martial artist wouldn’t do that in the first place, probably… gah… “My, uh, driving skills are absolute top notch! You won’t get any stuntman better than me around here! I’m in a  _ circus _ after all!”

“That would explain why you’re such a wimp, lackey.”

Internally, Hitoshi just groaned in annoyance as the Sun user appeared randomly from around the corner. He was used to these kinds of ambushes from Maya and Jem, after all. Externally, however, he shrieked and freaked out, pivoting all over even as he tried to keep himself from falling straight onto his face. An idiot was what he was pretending to be, but even in his act, he didn’t want to get a facefull of mud to ruin all his beautiful makeup.

“Eep!” Hitoshi squeaked and scurried behind Fon, who just held a sleeve up to his mouth to hide his grin. The martial artist didn’t move though, even when Renato sent them a very unimpressed look.

“Go and run along, coglione,” Renato scoffed and stared down Hitoshi threateningly. “Let the adults talk now.”

“C-coglione?” Hitoshi spluttered almost incoherently, trying to choke down his mirth at the childish insult. He just played it off as incredulity and outrage, hiding his maniacal grin behind his gloved hand as he backed off and walked away.

Once Hitoshi was sure that he was far enough away from them all, he let out a quiet snort of laughter, still cackling silently to himself. Wow, he didn’t think the hitman would be so  _ immature…  _ Maya would  _ love _ to have that tidbit of knowledge.  _ Coglione? _ Really? That was so grade school. Might as well call him cesso too.

With that petty interaction out of the way and his mirth fully expended into silent laughter, Hitoshi set out for his hotel. Kawahira had booked him a nice one for him, but he had enough sense to not ask the others if the man had done the same for him. He doubted any of them would be there doing missions all together if they knew that they were just being set up as sacrifices. Heck,  _ Hitoshi _ didn’t really want to do this himself, but he at least knew it was for the best.

What were seven people’s lives in the face of the entire world?

(Nothing. They were  _ nothing. _ )

Plus, they wouldn’t die or anything. At least, that was what Kawahira had told him. All they had to do was be connected with an object that would continually harvest their Flames as they were generated, thus powering the planet. Nothing more, nothing less. They could still function in society afterwards. Really, the ones who have been in the mafia and other criminal organizations their whole lives had the bad end of the stick in this situation. It wasn’t like they could continue doing whatever they did if their Flames were greatly diminished, right?

So the next day, Hitoshi woke up completely fine. He didn’t want to particularly interact with any of the other members of the I Prescelti Sette that day, but… they had another mission.

… Just because the first one went pear-shaped didn’t mean the second would be as bad, right?

Hitoshi just sighed, snagged a few bagels and a coffee—sweet, delicious, beautiful,  _ praised be _ coffee—and went on his way to the meeting place, wearing what looked like exactly the same outfit as last time. Still, he didn’t bring his motorcycle helmet, mostly out of habit since he never really wore it while biking around anymore. Even if he had died that first time, that didn’t dissuade him from doing his stunts without a helmet.

“We have a new mission,” Luce informed them once they were all seated at the table. Nobody was really surprised. Of course there was a new mission. Why else would they be here if there wasn’t? Of course,  _ Skull _ couldn’t say that.

Seeing as nobody else was saying anything, Hitoshi decided to speak up instead to get the ball rolling on this. He didn’t have all day to sit around, even if everybody else did.

“What’s this one going to be?” he wondered aloud, cocking his head curiously at the Sky as he lethargically dragged his Flames from her greedy ones again. Really? He rebutted her once already, so why was she trying again? “It’s not going to go as badly as last time, right?”

As the others scoff at his supposed naiveté— _ “Why is the lackey even here? It’s obvious he doesn’t know anything.” “Despite having the strongest Cloud Flames, he doesn’t know anything.” “It’s insulting to us how weak he is… he should put more effort in and train more.” _ —Luce just smiled indulgently at him as if he was a small child. Well… he was acting like a child, so he’d let that slide for her. Just for now.

“It will be fine, Skull,” she reassured him, sliding a hand across the table to reach for his leather-covered ones. He moved his hands away from hers slightly and started fidgeting with them to cover it up slightly, although he didn’t really care that she knew he did that on purpose. It was more to keep his cover with those of this group who didn’t really know how he actually was. Oh, but she  _ knew, _ seeing as her eyes narrowed slightly before her face smoothed out once more. She drew her hand back and placed it in her lap primly before she continued. “I’m sure everything will go much more smoothly than last time.”

Everyone just remained silent.

“Well,” she still kept smiling, pushing past all the distrust and annoyance, “this mission is to retrieve some stolen files, kill the thieving plant that stole them, and return them to the Carcassa Famiglia.”

“Carcassa, huh?” Renato mumbled quietly to himself under his breath. “Small-time family, nothing to worry about.”

Now, now, now… why would the supposed World’s Best be doing a job for a supposedly  _ small-time _ Famiglia… Hitoshi had his suspicions. Those suspicions being that either they weren’t really a small-time Famiglia, or that they were only the decoy for another stronger source of power to step in and act.

Either way, it probably wasn’t going to be very pretty, what with nobody here really knowing what the word  _ teamwork _ meant. Other than Hitoshi. Who was on a team previously, with the other heroes-in-training.

And  _ oh boy, _ did Aizawa-sensei force them to work together no matter what grudges they had.

“We will gather at the meeting place in four days time,” Luce concluded calmly, a soft smile still plastered to her face. Hitoshi didn’t even know if it was fake at that point. Maybe she really was just that unhinged? Well, he couldn’t say much for himself, seeing as he was currently playing the part of the fool so he wouldn’t be seriously targeted as much as the others… well, he could show  _ some _ of his skills off, right? He  _ was _ in the circus. Luce just continued her speech, rudely cutting off his train of thought. Inconsiderate. “That gives everyone time to wrap up any other business that they have going on currently. I hope to see you there, on time. We will convene at nine in the evening.”

“Wah, so late?” Hitoshi immediately complained as if it was second nature, letting the almost-scripted words fly out of his mouth with barely any effort. It was getting easier and easier to pretend now that he had had some practice… it had been only a few days since they had first met each other. That was frightening. “The great Skull-sama needs his beauty sleep, thou—”

A gunshot fired, and he instinctively ducked out of his chair and hit the deck, staring with wide-eyes at Renato, who calmly tucked his gun back away. He raised an eyebrow at the look Hitoshi was giving the crazy man, only throwing him a callous, “shut up, coglione, nobody wants to hear your whining.”

Nobody even looked in his direction as they all turned back toward Luce to confirm that they would in fact be there on time. Though… Fon did shoot one indecipherable glance at the stunt man as he left the room, the others soon following him. So Hitoshi stood up and brushed himself off, cautiously eyeing Renato, who was the only other person who was still left in the room.

“Ciao,” the hitman tossed out tauntingly, suavely making his way over to the exit. “Don’t mess everything up  _ too _ badly, lackey, like you always inevitably end up doing.”

Hitoshi rolled his eyes to himself as Renato sauntered out of the room. The door was slowly closing by itself, so he figured that he was safe enough to assume that nobody else was coming in. He turned around to gather up his things and depart—

And that was when the loud bang of a gunshot rang out for the second time that day.

His legs crumpled underneath him as he gave a small screech of stifled pain, his biking suit doing nothing to protect him from the bullet that penetrated his chest, setting his lungs on fire and—was he breathing? Oh God, he couldn’t breathe,  _ he couldn’t breathe _ —calm down, calm down, this isn’t the first time he was close to death, or even dying, but— _ oh God he was bleeding out from a bullet wound that his coworker had given him and _ —

_ Did Renato even know that his bullet had actually hit him? _

He couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt like they were slowly being filled with liquid, and he panicked even more despite knowing— _ hoping _ —that he would be fine. He just, he just, he just had to… to get into a corner? Wait, no. He—he coughed up blood, and the wooziness in his head—when had he begun feeling dizzy?—near quadrupled in magnitude, making him feel like he was working through cotton as he pathetically wriggled his way into the corner, slumping against the wall—and winced when that only made his bullet wound burn even more fiercely, and—

Was he on fire? Was he drowning? No no no no he was fine he was fine he was fine, he was just in shock, right? That’s what this was? That’s why the fire was cold now and licking at his insides and making him choke up more blood but he couldn’t feel the raw sensation in his throat?

Maybe… maybe he could just go to sleep and when he woke up the pain would be gone? He just wanted to cry—was he crying,  _ could _ he cry? He deliriously thought that maybe all of the liquid in his body was being devoted to all the blood that seemed like it was gushing out of him like a broken leak—was he broken? He was broken. He only had to go to sleep and he would be fixed… why couldn’t he go to sleep? He was so tired, so tired, and he just wanted to die so he could be fine again. He wanted Maya, he wanted Sam, he wanted Jimmie and Jem and Lantern and Mauve and he wanted to go home and he wanted to die.

So he closed his eyes and waited out the pain, and as his mind compressed and shrank and painfully stabbed itself in an attempt to  _ die already, _ his brain spewed out a dribbling, foggy last thought before he passed out—

His clothes were fucking ruined  _ again. _

**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all liked this and it wasn't horrible. Tell me what you think about it in the comments! What do you want to see happen? Constructive criticism? Or even just drop a 'plz more' down there, it's nice to know that people read this and are waiting for more.


End file.
